4zoltan,
You know there are certain moments when I think I could rather enjoy a long debate with one of you guys who is not merely committed to refuting kooks like me, but to doing so with a seemingly legitimate effort to employ logic and intellect in the process. Unfortunately, I generally wind up deciding that I simply can’t spare the time to engage in such a debate to any significant length.
That said, this is a less busy moment for me, and your questions here seem fair enough. (Although I probably won’t have these answers ready until someone has already addressed you questions better than I will have.) Yes, I’ve “heard of” mixed raster content compression, and I gather that when applied to images it can yield layers with differing color bit-depths, but I do not have in-depth knowledge of the technology, so I am willing for you to bring me up to speed on what software products currently implement MRC in such a way that they would tend to optimize a scan of the Birth Certificate so as to produce the types and number of layers, clipping masks, etc. that are present in the White House pdf. To my, admittedly limited, knowledge, no one has yet to get the details right in their attempts to demonstrate with currently available software how to arrive at a layer set that is principally the same as that contained in the White House pdf. If you are aware of a convincing demonstration that does accomplish principally the same layering scheme, then please share the details.
As to your questions about the date anomaly on the SSS card, I don’t pretend to know all the steps that were taken nor the rationale for each decision, but I can propose a line of reasoning that I think could adequately serve to address both of the concerns you’ve raised. I would suggest that the alleged forgers were able to obtain either a paper copy bearing the Maliki Station postal seal in combination with a round postal seal stamp containing the year-insertion recess which matched the proportions of the seal that would have been used Maliki station, or perhaps they were even able to gain a round stamp that was just like the one used by the Maliki Station during those years. The US Postal Service policies would, of course, dictate that great care be taken to implement procedures to ensure that year stamps are destroyed as soon as possible after the year for which they were created comes to an end. However, the surrounding round stamps, into which the year stamps would be inserted, would logically have been less subject to USPS procedural controls of that nature since the same round stamp would have been intended for use over the course of several years.
They needed a 1980 stamp (thus making a 2008 stamp the ideal counter part), in short, because some days or weeks prior to the request that prompted the release of the full document image, the SSS had already responded to an FOIA inquiry with a date and basic details of Obama’s purported registration in bare text form. Also, it’s crucial to understand that Obama had to register before he reached a certain age (18?), and that the date had to come only during those years when registration was a federal requirement, and a place and date had to be chosen which could be reconciled with the publicly stated narrative of Obama’s travels during those years.
The problem with using the digits ‘19’, as I think you may be suggesting, from a 1960 or 1995 year insert, etc. is course attributable to the same difficulty that arises with trying to find a 1980 stamp in 2008. In order to prevent stamp misuse and postal fraud The Postal Service mandates that the year inserts are to be destroyed as soon as each new year begins.
By the way, now that you mention it, this raises a point about another key anomaly that I had not remembered to include in my long list. When the first bare text date of registration was emailed in response to an FOIA requester, a date was relayed that wouldn’t have coincided sufficiently to put Obama in the right place at the right time at the right age. The requester then responded asking for clarification, pointing out that the date provided could not fit Obama’s timeline for being in Hawaii. Without further explanation, dates provided for all subsequent FOIA requests were modified so that they reflected a more plausible date, the same date which later then appeared on the full registration card image.
I’m not sure I’ll have the time to make it another round with you any time soon, but I think this addresses (inadequately, I suppose you’d say) each of the questions you’ve raised for this round.
“If you are aware of a convincing demonstration that does accomplish principally the same layering scheme, then please share the details.”
Not a demonstation but a statement by one of the developers of the Mixed Raster Content (MRC) compression standard after he reviewed the whitehouse pdf,
“I took a birth certificate which has a similar background pattern, scanned and compressed using an older DjVu tool. It has shown the same problems as POBC, like text letters that were missed and sent to background, and multiple text styles. It didn’t have halo, though, because its algorithm decided to obliterate the whole background pattern. Perhaps if I had time to toy around with packages and parameters I might find something very close to what was used to generate the document shown by the WH, but I unfortunately do not have the time right now.”
“In summary I can only say I see much stronger signs of common MRC algorithmic processing of the image rather than some intentional manipulation.”
Sincerely
Ricardo L. de Queiroz”
“As to your questions about the date anomaly on the SSS card”
The timeline for information release was like this:
February, 2008 - Selective Service reports that Obama’s SS registration is in order.
August, 2008 - Selective Service in an e-mail to PJMedia says there is nothing out of the ordinary about Obama’s SS registration.
October, 2008 - Selective Service releases copy of Obama’s SSR card.
The Selective Service in a 2012 letter to Mike Zullo, explained the process for SSR cards. The information is transcribed into the computer system, two microfilm copies of the card are made and the original paper card is destroyed. The two microfilm copies are kept in separate Federal Data Centers. One copy is kept as the record copy and the second is used as a working copy.
So for this to be a forgery, someone would have to break-in to at least one of the data centers and replace the existing microfilm roll with a replacement roll that contains the forged SSR card, or at the very least splice the forged image of the SSR card onto the existing roll. And do that before October, 2008.
There would be no need to actually create a paper copy of the SSR card, but instead just create a image that coud be put onto microfilm.
“a date was relayed that wouldn’t have coincided sufficiently to put Obama in the right place at the right time at the right age.”
The law for that time reads - “1-103. Persons born in calendar year 1961 shall present themselves for registration on any of the six days beginning Monday, July 28, 1980.”
Obama was in Los Angeles from September, 1979 to at least June, 1980 and again from September, 1980 to June, 1981 (Occidental College years). Could he have been in Hawaii in July, 1980?