Posted on 08/04/2009 5:55:59 AM PDT by markomalley
MARK COLVIN: An unsuspecting Adelaide public servant has found himself swept up in a conspiracy to oust the 44th President of the United States from office.
A movement known as the Birthers, which originated in California, is attempting to prove that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, therefore making him ineligible to be President.
In a bid to stake their claim they released what appeared to be a Kenyan birth certificate with Obama's name on it.
Sceptics soon traced the bogus birth certificate and found it to be a forgery. The document turns out to have been based on the birth certificate of an Adelaide man called David Jeffrey Bomford.
Dina Rosendorff broke the news to him.
DINA ROSENDORFF: David Jeffrey Bomford's language was a touch too colourful for radio when PM first contacted him with news his birth certificate had been used in a bid to oust Barack Obama.
Now that he's come to terms with his unwitting involvement in an international conspiracy, he's slightly more amused.
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: (Laughs) That is ridiculous. Little old person in Adelaide, the President of the United States. I don't know whether to laugh about it or not, be worried about it.
It is interesting someone from here being involved in a conspiracy - that is so funny.
DINA ROSENDORFF: It's believed computer hackers found Mr Bomford's birth certificate on his family's genealogy website.
They used it as the basis for a forgery in an attempt to prove President Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii.
Only people born in the USA can be president.
The fake Kenyan birth document has been circulated by political opponents of Obama's, called the Birthers, who are out to unseat him.
A growing online community who are against the Birthers quickly picked apart the bogus birth certificate and traced it back to about as far from Kenya as you can get - Thebarton Community Hospital at Mile End in South Australia and David Jeffrey Bomford.
As for the unsuspecting man at the centre of the political storm, he says he's not a Birther - just a public service clerk from Adelaide.
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: I'm not involved in anything. To think that someone like me would be involved in an international conspiracy, considering I'm a conspiratist myself, I believe everything in all the old Roswell and all that rubbish. So this is quite funny.
DINA ROSENDORFF: Do you have anything against President Obama?
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: No. I think he was a good choice for President. Apart from that, I didn't at first think he was a good President but he's proved himself alright so he changed my mind.
DINA ROSENDORFF: Looking over the documents in question Mr Bomford still can't quite believe his eyes.
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: It's little old me and my mum and everything else up there. Oh I definitely confirm that the birth certificate was mine. That was quite easy to see - my address, even the style of the birth certificate was an old South Australian one.
So it's quite easy to identify that it's mine.
DINA ROSENDORFF: And looking at the fake Kenyan birth certificate what do you make of it?
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: It's definitely a copy of my certificate. It's so laughable it's ridiculous.
DINA ROSENDORFF: Internet security expert Dr Asha Rao from RMIT University says although this case is quite funny, it's also very dangerous.
ASHA RAO: It just shows you what is possible on the Internet; that ultimately digital documents come down to a string of zeros and ones. This is an extreme case. Of course they must have trawled around and found something they could use.
But it's also, you know, you really don't, if you put that up, that is the main document that shows your identity. So, identity theft starts with getting hold of that document. So it's very dangerous to put stuff like that online.
DINA ROSENDORFF: Mr Bomford agrees with the experts and says he'll definitely be removing it from the website.
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: I'm very surprised at how anyone would even find it on the net unless they were looking for something like that because it's buried on a little known research site that's particularly for my family.
So I was very, very surprised that anyone would even find it on the net. I'll be certainly contacting my friend who runs that web and asking him to remove it.
DINA ROSENDORFF: But he reckons it's a good story to tell his friends and family.
DAVID JEFFREY BOMFORD: I'm not particularly worried about it because no-one would honestly believe that anyone like me would be involved in it - just a grey-haired old guy sitting in a corner in quiet old Adelaide.
MARK COLVIN: Adelaide public servant David Jeffrey Bomford ending that report by Dina Rosendorff.
You mean the link to another post on another thread? Or the “pwned” comment?
We have been “pwned”. Badly.
I’m pretty sure the file I have saved is the original one, but I can’t be totally certain.
I routinely use Photoshop Elements to clean up photos from my camera, to adjust lighting, color, to do cropping, or any number of innocent things that don’t involve the intent to deceive.
The Kenyan image was obviously a photograph of a piece of paper. The image properties tell me it’s 72 dpi resolution, a normal thing to see from a digital camera.
The Australian image appears to be a scan of a piece of paper. The image properties tell me it’s 150 dpi resolution, a normal scanner setting.
Of course, neither image tells me anything conclusively what was involved in creating the pieces of paper that were either photographed or scanned.
But to take an image and draw conclusions about it based on what a piece of software does to it, when the person making those conclusions is ignorant of what the software is actually supposed to be doing is just crazy.
oops
True.
It was the layering info that got the ball rolling to find many anomalies in the Australian B.C.
You missed my main point. The command that was run on the image file does not reveal layers in the image because the layer information is not there to begin with in a .jpg image.
If you plop multiple photographs onto your scanner bed and scan all of them, the command will isolate each of the photographs into separate files so that you don't have to do that manually or do multiple scans. It's a handy time saver. If you do it on a single image, the software is trying to find boundaries that don't exist. That's why it chopped the Australian image into multiple parts, which were erroneously called "layers". It didn't do anything with the "Kenyan" image probably because of the geometric distortion (the software is looking for clear horizontal and vertical divisions).
Start here and read on
Can't now, gotta go.
DINA ROSENDORFF: Internet security expert Dr Asha Rao from RMIT University says although this case is quite funny, it's also very dangerous.And that's the main reason we MUST have in reliable trusted hands, the actual birth documents and not just accept a digital image of Obama's.ASHA RAO: It just shows you what is possible on the Internet; that ultimately digital documents come down to a string of zeros and ones. This is an extreme case. Of course they must have trawled around and found something they could use.
Now there's a new piece of information unearthed by our ever vigilant press. < /sarc>
This is all so confusing. Who and what is a fraud? If there is a place where you could find all the arguments pro or con the Kenyan BC (without readuing 13,000 posts), that would be helpful.
Yes, he’s a PUBLIC SERVANT (with access to old documents?) who ‘used to not like Obama but now thinks he just great’, and is himself a conspirist?
What does DNA prove? DNA doesn’t list location of birth?
God, the libs are so stupid and remind me of my dog that I can pretend to throw something and he’ll run after *it* everytime.
Opening the Bromford B.C. in notepad shows ‘Lead Technologies Inc. V1.01’
Opening the ‘original’ Kenya B.C. (before it was changed at the website) shows nothing.
I just opened the replaced copy of the Kenya B.C. and it says...”Ducky.......Adobe”
“ASHA RAO: It just shows you what is possible on the Internet; that ultimately digital documents come down to a string of zeros and ones. This is an extreme case. Of course they must have trawled around and found something they could use.”
That has been what has cracked me up from the beginning.
Their logic is that this ‘could be photoshopped digital’ image is just trying to prove that Obama’s ‘could be photoshopped digital’ image is a fake.
Huh?
This is why we want the ORIGINAL from HAWAII presented as evidence IN A COURT OF LAW.
Not judge some judge (as one has actually said) saying “This is has been twittered and texted and it’s settled”. WTF? “Twittered and texted” is now what the court deems as submissable evidence?
Ok for the non tech folks ...who is right you or Fresh Wind...?
Last night after being convince the Kenya doc was a fake I became convinced that the Aussie doc was a fake .
There was no need for the Aussies to be hacked (if they were hacked) ...the image could be lifted from the internet and doctored.
all that I have read says the Aussie deal is the fake
This Mr. Bomford and his “birth certificate” seem a bit too slick and convenient to me.
More background on the man might be useful.
Zettaini sou desu!
from another thread:
To: Fresh Wind
Opening the Bromford B.C. in notepad shows Lead Technologies Inc. V1.01
Opening the original Kenya B.C. (before it was changed at the website) shows nothing.
30 posted on Tuesday, August 04, 2009 11:05:35 AM by Bigh4u2 (Denial is the first requirement to be a liberal)
Opening the Bromford B.C. in notepad shows Lead Technologies Inc. V1.01
Opening the original Kenya B.C. (before it was changed at the website) shows nothing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is from last night
So why would you say what you said about adobe?
I saved a copy from the Bomford URL:
http://www.bomford.net/worcestershire/images/DavidJeffreyBomfordBirthCertDoc65.jpg
and verify this statement as true.
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