http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/nro-on-the-pdf/
We have received several e-mails today calling into question the validity of the PDF that the White House released, namely that there are embedded layers in the document. There are now several other people on the case. We looked into it and dismissed it.
The PDF is composed of multiple images. That’s correct. Using a photo editor or PDF viewer of your choice, you can extract this image data, view it, hide it, etc. But these layers, as they’re being called, aren’t layers in the traditional photo-editing sense of the word. They are, quite literally, pieces of image data that have been positioned in a PDF container. They appear as text but also contain glyphs, dots, lines, boxes, squiggles, and random garbage. They’re not combined or merged in any way. Quite simply, they look like they were created programmatically, not by a human.
What’s plausible is that somewhere along the way — from the scanning device to the PDF-creation software, both of which can perform OCR (optical character recognition) — these partial/pseudo-text images were created and saved. What’s not plausible is that the government spent all this time manufacturing Obama’s birth certificate only to commit the laughably rookie mistake of exporting the layers from Photoshop, or whatever photo editing software they are meant to have used. It’s likely that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner. Let’s leave it at that.
UPDATE: I’ve confirmed that scanning an image, converting it to a PDF, optimizing that PDF, and then opening it up in Illustrator, does in fact create layers similar to what is seen in the birth certificate PDF. You can try it yourself at home.
Our TWO TERABYTE machine downstairs has some stuff used for three-dimensional art preparation that could make Obama's BC look like a placenta from a dugong if someone wanted that.
And that's before the "art" part!
BTW, I think the original "scan" of the documents in the book was done quite some time ago by a contractor setting up a new data base for Hawaii.
The originals were probably disposed of once the system was tested and put on line.
They used a pretty sophisticated scanning software because it converted a curved surface into a flat surface with very little distortion. You can see the scatter in the scan on the upper left where the page curve was most prominant.
I believe the document is fake because everything that has come from this administration has been faked and is a lie.
Writing that, you are correct. I have spent many years using the full Adobe Acrobat software and you have either the option to turn the document into a format that can be edited, or you can make the document "flat." The second choice renders any scan into a JPEG picture that is optimized and saved as a PDF file. The first allows a person to either edit using Acrobat or export to Word or other text editing software.
I think the place where people should investigate is the fonts. Turning the document into a form that can be edited uses the closest matching font internal to Acrobat. The "flat" type of document is a true picture of the copy that was scanned. If that copy was the original, or true copy of the original, the font would be that used back when the form was originally filled out since it is just a picture of the document.
The font and spacing issue was the the problem that ended up showing the infamous Bush documents to be fake and thus creating the downfall of Dan Rather.