“There are two professional organizations whose members are regularly qualified as expert witnesses by judges to testify in court: The American Board of Forensic Document Examiners and The American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.”
But do they do forensics on computer images of a document like the PDF image of Obama’s birth certificate on the White House server?
“But do they do forensics on computer images of a document like the PDF image of Obama’s birth certificate on the White House server?”
There is nor reason to examine the pdf. There is the AP copy which is a higher resolution image than the pdf. It could not have been made by the pdf copy (which is a lower resolution image). This means that there is an original document or computer file from which the pdf and the AP copies were created. That document or file has never been examined.
Then there are the photographs taken by Savanah Guthrie. Are they of the document that was used to create the pdf and AP copies? That paper document has never been examined.
BTW, all three of these images (AP, pdf, photos) contain the same vital statisitcs information.
Yes, but any forensic document examiner worth his or her salt is going to want to compare the computer generated PDF image to the original, vault copy document.
In court, this is essential because the state of Hawaii has consistently maintained that the data on the original matches the data on the whitehouse.gov image. The administration could have posted a drawing of a birth certificate by Malia Obama, if the data s the same as on the original, there is no crime.
Under Hawaii law, a judge’s court order would be necessary to release the original and even that is questionable since the letter of the law says that a court order can force the release of a “COPY” of the original for inspection. (Hawaii Revised Statute 338-18 (b) (9).