Debunking the Birthers: Scanning a Certificate, Birth or Otherwise

As I've said here in the past, I'm sympathetic to conspiracy theorists, because I was briefly taken in by one: the 9/11 truthers. I exited out the other side with some swiftness, when things got a little too crazy to process. I still have problems with the "official" story, but have far more with most truther theories. It became clear to me that any contrary information to the truther story would be explained away, or somehow folded into the storyline. There is nothing that will dissuade them.

This is my reimaging of Obama's COLB. Have at it, Birthers!

Such it is with the birthers. When Barack Obama released a scan--repeat: a scan--of an authenticated "long form" birth certificate from the State of Hawaii, the birther brigade went into high gear. Starting with one of their biggest flaws in understanding--that an internet-ready file is the document, rather than a scan of it--they went over the White House's PDF file with a fine-toothed comb. And within minutes, there was a new addition to the birther catalogue: The birth certificate has LAYERS!

Like any good conspiracy theory, there are a few nuggets that grab you. Hey, there are layers! I downloaded my own version, opened it in Adobe Illustrator, and--I'll be damned--the document was made of many incongruous layers.  You could remove "clipping paths", ungroup it, and it was actually made of nine different parts! Why, this must be a forgery! FAKE! FAKE! FAKE! But wait a minute. . .

Why on earth would a forger do this? For what purpose would you separate out the background (but leave white holes where the letters were)? Why would you break up the word "BARACK" to "BA ACK" and a lonely "R"? You wouldn't, that's what. A forger would make a fake document, not a fake scan. The idiots. . .ahem. . .ignoramuses believing this theory don't think far enough out to realize that the document they are looking at is not an original, but merely a digitization of the original. If there are any fake elements of the document, they would not be discoverable in the PDF file.

But can I prove it? I believe I can. But I had to tread into semi-unfamiliar territory to do so. The only PDF scanning software I have is on my Mac PowerBook. And the only official document on safety paper I could locate easily is my Certificate of Marriage (my gay marriage, birthers!) from California. So, I set it up, scanned the document, and saved it. Here is what I found:

This is a reduced image of the scan of the entire document.
(I reduced the resolution so you vultures can't read it!)

I scanned the entire document in high resolution into Adobe Acrobat Professional. I set everything to "automatic," and scanned it in. After saving the file, I opened Adobe Illustrator CS3, and opened my saved PDF. Immediately when it opened, I saw the document assemble itself!

After some right-clicking to "release clipping masks" and some ungrouping, I was left with four distinct layers. This is short of the nine from the Obama birth certificate, but I didn't even change any of the automatic settings. There are many options you can tweak. Also, my certificate has a very elaborate, different background and border, which may have affected my results.

But I think I've proven the point that yes, a scan of an official document does separate into layers when you scan it. They aren't predictable layers either. There were two very small bands of the border at the bottom of the image that separated themselves out for no particular reason. I didn't retouch, sharpen, blur, enhance or otherwise make any changes. The low resolution image at the right is merely a screen capture of my zoomed out screen, so that it can't be read (do you really need to know my business? No, you do not!).


This is the full scan of the corner of the document. Then, I ungrouped it. . .


Now, it should be noted that the most current birther theory about these scans is that there are duplicate letters in the document. Namely, they found two "E"s or two "1"s or two check boxes that look identical in different areas of the scan. Does that seem hinky? Maybe. Could I recreate it if I fiddled with enough settings, and ran enough tests? Maybe. Probably. Don't know, don't care.



Looky there! I can delete the foreground! But notice, some artifacts
are left that are not part of the background image.



The reason I don't care is that there would be no reason to make a forgery that way. I already explained that the forgery would be on the paper document and not the scan, which should be obvious. But if a digital scammer was going to fake the form, why on earth would he need to assemble his forgery from a bunch of tiny scanned elements? If that was all you had to work with, I'd get it. But it isn't. Barack Obama has the most awesome governmental apparatus in the entire world at his disposal. He could order up a document so perfect, so flawless, that its authenticity could bear the strongest of scrutiny. To assume that all they had to work with was low-res scans of little check boxes, and they had to duplicate them to complete their ruse is, in a word, stupid.



This is what happens when you delete the background. Look at all the
random elements that were part of the background, but are on a layer with
the text. Did I forge my marriage certificate?



All of this ultimately leads to the conclusion that no matter what is offered up, or what points of logic are used, the birthers will never be satisfied. There will be a (smaller and smaller) group of them who will continue to believe that their conspiracy theory is true. And the same goes for the brand new "deathers" who are convinced that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, or was not killed this weekend. The release of authentic photos of the corpse would do nothing to change their minds. You'd just have 100 threads on FreeRepublic dissecting the photo. Excuse me, dissecting a low-res JPEG of the photo.

I cannot with this test declare the Obama birth certificate to be genuine. But I can definitively declare that there is no obvious reason to believe that it is not, nor does the "layers" argument hold any water whatsoever.  When some FReeper tells you that a scan cannot produce such a result, they are either lying, or they are wrong.

A NOTE TO MY READERS: If you venture into the comments section below, be warned that a troll who is too cowardly to leave his/her name has infested the blog.  But he/she/it unwittingly proved a point. This troll is fixated upon the signature of Obama's mother, and how the software separated it into pieces. A similar thing happened to some of the lines and graphic elements in the document I scanned. So, while "Anonymous" is still focused like a psychotic laser beam on the signature!!!, I on the other hand am completely satisfied that the document offered online by the White House could indeed be produced by scanning a real document into a PDF software program. No hanky panky.

"Anonymous" has copious links to YouTube videos that "support" the forgery conspiracy theory, but don't fall for it. Anyone can produce and upload a YouTube video, as I found out with my new phone this weekend, when I almost accidentally uploaded an action shot of the floor of the house I was staying in. And if you get sucked in by the "facts" presented by these loons, please ask yourself what would motivate a forgery artist to use a low-res PDF scan to fool the public. The storyline hasn't even been articulated, because there is no scenario that would make any sense. And this is my final word on the subject. I think.