THE DAILY KOS tampers with Obama’s birth certificate? A felony. Will our government investigate?

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In my Inbox this morning, I found several references to an overnight “discovery.”

The claim is that if you download fancy image detection software from GIMP and apply it to the image of Obama’s birth certificate, you can see the embossed seal.

Here’s one place the story appears: Atlas Shrugs.

And I received this email via No Quarter:

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: GREGORY [last name removed]

Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 5:11 AM

Subject: Obama birth certificate seal

To: susanunpc@gmail.com

This is a message for TexasDarlin.

Image enhancement – specifically edge detection, makes the entire seal quite clear in the Obama birth certificate (and makes the two folding creases clearer).

Basically, this works because the embossing has created edges that the edge detection algorithms can enhance. I’m attaching a jpg of a copy of the birth certificate that I ran edge detection on.Here are some instructions to do it yourself. The freeware image software GIMP can be downloaded from GIMP.

The highest resolution jpg of the birth certificate can be downloaded from Daily Kos.

Start GIMP and import the high resolution jpg of the birth certificate.

Then go to the ‘Edge Detect’ item under the ‘Filters’ menu. Choose ‘Edge’ under ‘Edge Detect’. Set Algorithm to ‘Sobel’ and ‘Amount’ to 5.0 , then hit OK.Alternatively, the seal is even clearer after the following. Under ‘Edge Detect’ go to ‘Sobel’. Leave the boxes ‘Sobel horizontally’ and ‘Keep sign of result’ checked, but uncheck the box ‘Sobel vertically’. Then click OK. Then choose ‘Edge’ under ‘Edge Detect’. Set Algorithm to ‘Sobel’ and ‘Amount’ to 5.0 , then hit OK.The seal is faintly visible to the naked eye in the unprocessed birth certificate using high magnification. It causes ripples in the green hatch marks.Keep up the blogging!Best,Greg [last name removed]

The first Red Flag I noticed right off the bat:

The instructions tell you to use a file saved at Kos! This is Kos, the blogger who first published the alleged birth certificate without any attribution. (See my previous story).

Of course, I immediately downloaded the software and applied it, following Greg’s instructions, to TWO jpg files of the Obama birth certificate.

The first file I used is the one I was directed to by Greg, the one saved at Kos. The second file I tested is the high-resolution jpg image saved by the blogger Polarik in his June 20 post about the birth certificate. I confirmed that Polarik’s image was saved from Kos’s original story on June 12, Obama’s birth certificate, and that the image resolution of Polarik’s file is comparable to the resolution in the new file saved at Kos, the one which Greg referred me to.Guess What?

The “seal,” sure enough, shows up on the first image — the one I was instructed to use in Greg’s e-mail. Not surprisingly, it looks like the attachment he sent:VIEW the full-size image by clicking here.

BUT when the second jpg file — the one Polarik made from the original Kos story — is analyzed using the exact same application of the magic software, you guessed it…. there is NO SEAL:VIEW the full-size image by clicking here.I have not yet applied the “edge” test to the image on Obama’s “Smears” web page. Maybe that’s been “updated” too? Polarik informs me that his complete analysis of all images using GIMP will be up shortly.

Did Kos tamper with this document?Polarik thinks so. I caught up with his comments on the Atlas Shrugged story:

Sorry, folks, but another Photochopped fraud has been perpetrated again.First of all, that blackened image was taken from the Daily Kos image, and NOT the “Smears” website.Secondly, this thing was modified to death.Here’s the JPG Exif information inside that proves my points:

Read the rest of Polarik’s comments here.

Kos has some (more) explaining to do. Tampering with a birth certificate is a crime.

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