[higgmeister]

Why would anyone do an OCR scan instead of providing a photostat copy?

So they could punk the Polarik crowd. And it worked.

How can you not think that's the ultimate cop out?

Obfuscating is not punking.

[palmer]

Yes, it was obfuscated. The purpose of the obfuscation was punking. If not then you would need to believe Obama's BC was not sent from Hawai (even though the governor said it was) and instead was created in the WH using photoshop.

OC Simpler explanation: Hawaii sent a document, the WH displayed it. But someone in the WH also scanned it in and fiddled around randomly. Keep in mind the OCR artifacts are random, not just identifying data. So alteration was not the purpose, just obfuscation. It worked very well since many people wasted many hours analyzing random artifacts..