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Whitehouse.gov - Birth Certificate Long Form (Web Archive)

This is the one. I tried asking in my normal channels (hacker news, IRC) but am getting bombarded with accusations of being a Birther.

I am definitely not. Someone showed me there are separate layers for the text and the rest of the document, and also that the font didn't make sense.

I am just hoping you could find evidence one way or another.

Screenshot of Obama's birth certificate

rjzii
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geoff
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    It would seem that no amount of proof will satisfy the conspiracy theorists; they always have the ad hoc argument that the CIA has conspired.. Or something. The CNN investigation showed the original newspaper birth announcement, as well as the fact that these announcements were taken from the hospitals and not parents.... Just as with UFOs and Bigfoot, some will always believe. – M. Werner Apr 29 '11 at 00:40
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    @geoff: Welcome to the Skeptics-SE community. Fortunately this sort of question is on-topic around here! Do you have any links to the specific claims about the separate layers for the text, and the font problems, so we can evaluate them? Normally, the onus for proof is placed on the side making the extraordinary claims. Maybe it is arguable, but I would think that claiming a US President has faked a certified document from state archives would count as extraordinary. – Oddthinking Apr 29 '11 at 02:33
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    Here’s [an album showing the different layers](http://imgur.com/a/DwfgP). – Josh Lee Apr 29 '11 at 06:27
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    The layers look entirely normal to me. The main form will be printed in advance. When the child is born details will be filled in, it will then be signed by the people who need to sign it and then after that has happened it will be processed and the department of heath number will be stamped on. What is contentious here? – Ardesco Apr 29 '11 at 07:46
  • Think about your question rationally. Do you think the president, with the resources of the entirety of the USA, would actually need to Photoshop anything? A typewriter would not be hard to obtain, nor would a blank copy of the old document. With any graphic artist with any skill you would not be able to tell a Photoshopped document, a static document could literally be created and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Aside from that his birth certificate doesn't matter, his mother was an American, he is an American by birth. – avwa Apr 29 '11 at 00:58
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    On the other hand, remember that faked letter asserting that President GWBush had skipped his National Guard service or whatever it was? Even with all the tools available, it was a terrible fake. The fact that the materials are available to make good fakes doesn't prove that someone won't make a bad one. (And I'm not a birther either.) – Kyralessa Apr 29 '11 at 01:42
  • Agreed, but President Obama has shown a great grasp of technology and would be far more aware than many of his colleagues about technological blunders. That said, the secret service would most likely be the one doing said doctoring, and they aren't exactly known for being anything but exceptional, with the recent exception of the whole "shoegate" debacle under Bush. Also what you're referring to wouldn't have been put out by the president, but someone who was looking to get caught or who's ideology or lack of ability caused the error. – avwa Apr 29 '11 at 02:35
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    Also note that at the time of the election, the secret service did not work for Obama. – Lagerbaer Apr 29 '11 at 04:38
  • @Lagerbaer Negative predicates like that one are very difficult to prove :) – Dr. belisarius Apr 29 '11 at 04:51
  • @Lagerbaer actually, the USSS works for the president elect and provides at least some services to presidential candidates as well as the president. – jwenting Apr 29 '11 at 06:58
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    **Please stop speculating in the comment thread** Move this to the [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/). Also please remember that answers are **not the place** for original unreferenced research. – Sklivvz Apr 29 '11 at 08:47
  • @SkepticsSE: Thank you for receiving and superbly answering this question. I was not certain what your policies where, but it seemed the only viable place for such a question on SEN. Let me know if politics is indeed off-topic here, and I'll simply close/lock such topics in the future rather than migrate them. – jrista Apr 29 '11 at 19:13
  • @jrista: we are discussing it -> http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/621/politics-beliefs-and-motivations-should-not-be-allowed-here – Sklivvz Apr 30 '11 at 13:04

2 Answers2

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It looks to me like the scanner that was used to make the PDF split the image into several layers during construction of the PDF in order to reduce the file size while maintaining sharp text. If we look side-by-side at some writing that was not separated into a separate layer and some text that was, we can clearly see the effect (note that I have moved the writing around to get a good side-by-side example):

Hi-res text from one layer next to low-res image from Obama birth certificate

This is a very common feature of scanners that produce PDFs, since your documents tend to look horrible otherwise (or are huge). Here's an example taken from my local copier (again with text moved next to writing that was not recognized as requiring hi-res):

enter image description here

Thus, the existence of multiple layers in no way is evidence that the document is not authentic. This is the standard way for scanners/copiers to handle scanned-document-to-PDF conversions.

Upon review of the document, I can't find an instance of the font "not making sense". Looks like a typewriter to me, and the same one used for the whole document (complete with artifacts that I recall seeing before, like partially shifted caps).

Edit: this site shows all the layers (thanks to geoff for finding it). You can verify them for yourself by loading the PDF into a vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and ungrouping the pieces.

Another edit: This site presents the same conclusion (thanks to fred for finding it), albeit without a clear demonstration, and with some technical inaccuracies.

Glorfindel
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Rex Kerr
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  • Acrobat has a lot of processing options for documents regarding readability and optimization that could influence this as well. – Josiah Apr 29 '11 at 16:13
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    Thank you for this; I couldn't imagine why a scanned document would have layers, but as an optimization technique it makes perfect sense. Would you add a link to http://imgur.com/a/DwfgP in your answer, it shows all the layers in a way that meshes perfectly with your answer. – geoff Apr 29 '11 at 18:49
  • I've read (but can't find the article at the moment) that often in pdfs, there is an OCR component that picks the text up into different layers. That is what lets you select and copy the text while still letting you have a background image. – fred Apr 29 '11 at 19:47
  • @fred - That's a different process entirely; PDFs contain embedded graphics and text, and when you select a section of the document, the text components displayed at that location get copied out as text. Although OCR could be used for this on pure images, that's (to my knowledge) always done during the _generation_ of the PDF from an image, not the _display_ of the PDF via Acrobat reader or other tools. – Rex Kerr Apr 29 '11 at 20:08
  • [Here](http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/with-drudge-reports-help-birthers-latch-onto-phony-forgery-theory.php?ref=fpa) is the story I was reading. Maybe I misunderstood what they are saying. – fred Apr 29 '11 at 20:17
  • @fred - No, you understood correctly, but they are either confused or unclear. It's the _scanned image to PDF conversion_ that does the OCR or OCR-like-step, not the _PDF itself or the PDF viewer_. (A PDF is (usually) just data, so it can't do anything on its own.) – Rex Kerr Apr 29 '11 at 20:25
  • is anyone aware of an open source program that will separate the layers of a pdf as adobe illustrator does? – Tristan Havelick May 03 '11 at 12:35
  • Many of the books on google books exhibit this black-layer separation, in that context it is most definitely for OCR purposes. – horatio May 03 '11 at 14:08
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    I like to say that conspiracy theorists are "halfway"-skeptics. It *is* good to question things, but then you should not stop with the first thing that seems weird to you. – Lagerbaer May 03 '11 at 19:16
  • @Tristan Havelick - As I said in the answer, Inkscape can do it. – Rex Kerr May 03 '11 at 19:30
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This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWQw2AAIho does a great job of showing how this is an artifact of the scanning and compression process.

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