Thomas H. Chapin IV Musings and General Nonsense

A Dissection of Barack Obama’s (Supposedly Fake) Birth Certificate

Ok, I went and analyzed the PDF copy of Barack Obama's long form birth certificate which was released by the white house, and I will attempt to explain some of the basic concepts behind how it could have been produced. I dissected the PDF to re-create the different pieces that were used.

1. Photocopy (black and white) the actual birth certificate and scan the resulting image into the computer. You should have something like this: http://i.imgur.com/nR0ND.jpg

2. Get a green and white "security paper" background, like this: http://i.imgur.com/cQLu6.jpg

3. Overlay the black and white image over the green and white security paper (using a layer effect such as "multiply"), giving you something like this: http://i.imgur.com/WOKFB.jpg

The only piece that's missing is whatever OCR software they supposedly used which apparently attempted to automatically identify text in the scanned document and apply a white glow behind it, which made the text look "sharper". This optimization process also apparently separated the parts of the image that it was able to identify as text into their own layers.

Note how the OCR software only applied the sharpening halo to some of the text. Parts of the text that it was unable to recognize, it left on the bottom layer: http://i.imgur.com/hOBY2h.jpg

Final optimized composite: http://i.imgur.com/RYgqq.jpg

Additionally, here's a black and white, high resolution version of the birth certificate (not on the green security paper background) which was released to the AP by the white house before they put up the digitally scanned and optimized version in PDF format: http://i.imgur.com/X7FjQ.jpg

This high resolution image of the birth certificate was clearly not created by printing out the low-resolution, optimized PDF, so the whole "layers in the PDF means it was all a fraud" argument that birthers like to use simply doesn't logically hold water. The existence of this high quality black-and-white copy of the birth certificate means that if the birth certificate was forged, it would have had to been forged in high quality mode, in some other software, long before it was scanned and turned into an optimized PDF with a green security background and mechanically separated layers.

Also, for what it's worth, both Snopes and FactCheck.org have articles about this particular topic.

Ideas for Potentially Solving Highway Traffic

1. Variable brake lights that inform following cars as to how light/heavy you are actually pressing your brake pedal.

2. Sensors on the front of the car which monitor how closely you are following the car in front of you. When this information is combined with your current speed and the knowledge of average braking distances and human response time, a buzzer or dashboard light could notify you to increase your following distance.

Firefox 6.0 – Gray Colored URL in Address Bar

If you have upgraded to Firefox 6.0 recently, you might have noticed a change in your URL address bar.

Now, instead of the web address being in all black like you might have grown accustomed to over the past 10 years, the powers that be have decided it would be better to color all of the URL gray (except for the primary domain name, which still appears in black).

I can see how this could be helpful to the ignorant masses who get scammed by phishing emails, but I'm a relatively intelligent internet user, and I have been browsing the net long enough to know what the primary domain name is in the URL without needing to have it colored different.

If you are like me and wish to set the address bar colors back to the way they used to be in prior versions of Firefox, simply follow these easy steps:

1. In your Firefox address bar, type "about:config" (sans quotes), and press enter.
2. In the filter search box, enter "browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled"
3. Right-click on the "browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled" line item in the listing and select "Toggle" to switch it to false

Facebook Authentication and a Potential Security Risk

The idea of a "universal login" is not new by any means. Since the early days of the internet, many people have longed for the ease of having to only remember one login and password to access all of their favorite member-based sites.

Over the years, there have been a number of companies/organizations that have tackled this problem, and recently a couple of solutions have bubbled to the top in popularity. OpenID, Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID, and even the Twitter Login API have all been used as "universal login" methods which can be integrated with a web site.

None of these solutions, however, have even come close to the adoption rate boasted by the Facebook Authentication system. Practically everyone has a Facebook account these days, regardless of age, gender, education level, location, favorite web browser, email address, or internet provider! Facebook embraced this fact and built a nicely packaged authentication system which enables developers to integrate Facebook Authentication into pretty much any app or web site they can imagine. You can now find the Facebook universal login method in everything from iphone apps and desktop applications, to normal run-of-the-mill web sites.

This brings me to my point: Potential Security Risks

While logging into my Facebook account via all the different web sites and various applications which I use on a daily basis, I became acutely aware of a glaring security risk with the Facebook Authentication system. Basically, the way how Facebook instills a sense of security is via a recognizable blue bar which has a gray bar and diagonal stripes underneath it. This familiar imagery is displayed whenever you are asked to provide your Facebook login information. The idea that is consequently trained and reinforced in end-users' minds is that the familiar imagery represents a genuine Facebook login screen. As such, if you are being asked for your Facebook information in a login popup, but the unique blue and gray bar is missing, you would immediately suspect that something was wrong.

Notice, however, that the Facebook URL is nowhere to be seen in the login popup. There is literally no easy way to verify where the contents of the login form are actually going. This is especially true in the countless iphone applications and computer programs which are making use of the Facebook Authentication system. A rogue developer could easily create a form which displayed the blue and gray bar, but that actually transmitted the login information somewhere else entirely (such as a database on their own server) before it sent the information to Facebook.

The exact same thing could be easily accomplished by any semi-competent web developer with 15 minutes worth of spare time. All they would have to do is make a mock-up copy of the legitimate Facebook login popup, but have it submit somewhere else entirely. The end user wouldn't know the difference.

In summary: Facebook's way of instilling a *false* sense of security via their blue/gray bar is totally flawed and easily exploited. They need to come up with some sort of method which enables end-users to verify the form's authenticity before they enter their login information.