Thread: Barack Obama's citizenship questioned

Birth certificate 'baloney': 'Official' doesn't mean real

Investigation shows how terrorists, fakers could pass as U.S. citizens

Posted: January 25, 2010
9:00 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

When it comes to birth certificates, just because it's official, doesn't mean its real.

A WND investigation has revealed that over the past three decades, changes to how the 50 states process vital documents have opened wide new avenues for nefarious parties to alter records and thus acquire fraudulent, but official birth certificates to falsely pass as U.S. citizens.

Thanks to the states' nearly exclusive reliance on digitalized vital records, a foreign terrorist, for example, wishing to obtain a U.S. passport for unhindered travel in and out of the country could – with the right computer knowledge or coercion of the right state employee – walk into a county courthouse and within minutes, pick up a genuine, but completely fraudulent American birth certificate for his passport application … and no one would be the wiser.

"It's entirely possible that these [vital records] systems could be altered by someone who wishes to do so," says Professor Eugene H. Spafford, executive director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

Spafford, the 2009 recipient of a Computing Research Association award "for his long and effective leadership on issues of computer security and policy" has worked with the FBI, departments of Justice and Energy, the U.S. Air Force and a number of private companies to identify cybersecurity threats. He has testified before Congress and been consulted by U.S. presidents for his expertise in the field.

Spafford told WND that the push to digitalize vital records and rely on computers to print out official documents – like Barack Obama's presented Certification of Live Birth, or COLB – has created the opportunity for fraud and deception to slip through the cracks.

Get the must-wear clothing item for 2010! "Where's the birth certificate" T-shirt!

"Many state systems – and federal systems for that matter – that keep records [electronically] generally have weaker controls that what should be in place," Spafford said. "And with tight budgets, the amount of time spent keeping them up-to-date, auditing the log records and following up on exceptions tends to be one of the things that's neglected."

A long history of fraud and alteration

The federal government has already admitted that the states' systems of vital records have been routinely breached in the past.

In 1976, the Justice Department advisory committee pointed out that false identification was a serious national problem, prompting the U.S. Public Health Service to revise its Model State Vital Statistics Act in 1977, in part to strengthen efforts to reduce rampant birth certificate fraud.

But nearly a decade later, a task force sponsored by the national citizens' association Laws at Work concluded: "In some jurisdictions, birth certificates are easily counterfeited, obtained through imposture or created from stolen legitimate blank forms."

Then, in 1986, the Inspector General Office of Analysis and Inspection followed up with its own study on birth certificates and found, "They are definitely being used for fraudulent purposes. We may be seeing the tip of the iceberg."

The findings, coupled with advances in computer technology, led to sweeping changes across the country in the two decades since.

WND contacted each of the 50 states and the nation's capital to learn what they've done to protect America's vital records.

Beginning with California in 1978, and with progressively more and more states through the 1980s to today, the U.S. began moving away from paper files to computerized databases as the primary storage for birth certificates.

One by one, and pushed by changes in privacy laws, states also began eliminating the issuance of the "old" form of birth certificates – with birth weight and babies' footprints and other identifying details – and producing instead simplified birth certificates, printed off a computer, with a minimum of information.

These new short forms, sometimes called "abstracts" or "certifications of live birth," are now the standard issue in nearly all 50 states, with Kansas and Mississippi among the few exceptions. Most states still issue a long-form certificate upon request, but in some states, such as New Hampshire, Colorado, Arkansas, Utah and Vermont, the long-form certificates, which might include details such as the doctor's signature or hospital of birth, are no longer available for babies born after a certain date.

The individual states told WND the digitalization effort was for a variety of reasons, including, "It's more efficient than photocopies," "It's quicker and more economical," and the frequent assertion, "The new technology is more secure than the old paper system."

But as Spafford told WND, new technology comes with new security issues.

"Any form of technology – paper included – has benefits and risks that need to be considered," Spafford said. "We have to make sure the system adequately considers the risks and builds in the necessary safeguards, so that we don't introduce new problems that effectively counterbalance or overwhelm the benefits."

But how vulnerable is the new technology?

How fraud can happen

"There are several notable cases where other kinds of records were compromised and downloaded," Spafford told WND. "Records from the Veterans Administration have been compromised on several occasions. Medical records from the agency that handles military medical data were compromised a few years ago. These kinds of things do tend to happen."

Spafford explained that there are two primary ways computerized records can be altered or faked. The first is if someone in a vital records office itself has access to the database and can be persuaded to commit fraud:

"There are cases where insiders, those with legitimate access, have been caught in other areas looking at records, possibly changing them," Spafford said. "There was someone in Washington, D.C., who was with the property tax office and who was altering property tax records, creating phantom properties and payments and stealing money from the District government, many millions.

"These are examples where the security of the databases wasn't as good as it should be," he continued, "and one could argue that they were caught eventually, but we don't know about the ones who haven't been caught, and we don't know in some of these cases if what they said they accessed was all they actually accessed."

Spafford concluded, "These concerns have been thought about by some parties in constructing these databases, but whether or not they've built all the necessary controls or safeguards in place, especially for insiders with access who can be bribed or threatened … it's worrisome."

The second way records could be altered or falsely generated is through the nimble fingers of a hacker.

"If the systems are on the network and they don't have the appropriate controls," Spafford said, "it could be done remotely."

Spafford proposed several ways records could be protected from hackers, including storing a hard copy of one state's records in another state for accountability, or most importantly, keeping vital records off the network altogether, reserved for in-department use only.

WND's investigation into how states enter and share their vital records information, however, showed the system is far from adopting Spafford's recommendations, and is, in fact, leaving wide avenues open for electronic mischief.

The first electronic link a hacker could exploit (or an inside person could infiltrate), WND discovered, isn't even in the state or county courthouse, but in any of the state's hospitals. Most states now allow hospital staffers to enter new birth certificates directly into the system when a baby is born.

And while some states, such as Illinois, do not issue birth certificates until a state staffer has verified the paper record against the entered computer record, not all states adhere to such security standards.

When WND spoke to the vital records office in North Dakota, for example, a staffer admitted there is no double check of the hospital's entry at the state level and, "Occasionally errors do happen."

Still other states, such as Michigan, still require the primary database entry to be done by a county vital records staffer, but the weakness in all these cases is that the records are linked electronically and therefore create potential entry points for a hacker.

A June 2007 report by Dr. Daniel Friedman of Population and Public Health Information Services reported on the dramatic increase of vital records now being sent and accessed on information networks.

Friedman reports that in a 1990 survey of 25 states, only 7 electronically transmitted their records, with only 17 percent of the total records on the network. But by 1995, that number had jumped to 57 percent, and by 2000, 24 of the 25 states surveyed were on the network, with 96 percent of their birth certificates being electronically transmitted.

Furthermore, the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems is in the process of connecting as many states as possible to a nationwide Electronic Verification of Vital Events network that enables a central system in Washington, D.C., to query the states' vital records networks for federal purposes. Currently 18 states are online with EVVE, with four more and New York City in process of implementing it.

And yet, once the records are in the system, WND's investigation discovered, in many cases there is almost no accountability check to ensure the electronic database is correct. If a county staffer punches the keyboard and the screen says the record is valid, the applicant is automatically issued a COLB.

Arizona and Colorado, for example, are among those states now offering same-day service for applicants, who can walk into a county office, ask for an official copy of their COLB and walk out with it within the hour.

WND asked staffers in both states, "Would someone have to check for a paper record on file somewhere? Verify anything more than what the computer database says?"

Staffers from both states answered, "No. It's all computerized."

But who would do such a thing?

There are several different groups of people who would have motivation to hack or exploit the system with the purpose of altering records. WND reported, for example, on an immigration scheme from 2004, when the FBI nabbed Jean Anderson, the former deputy registrar of the Hudson County, N.J., Office of Vital Statistics, for taking money to falsify county records.

According to a Department of Justice news release, Anderson was paid to insert phony birth records for illegal aliens into the files at her county office. The immigrants, in turn, approached county window clerks and requested copies of their birth certificates, after which the clerks looked to the files and, upon seeing the records Anderson had inserted, issued fraudulent birth certificates unknowingly.

Spafford added two potential perpetrators: "One group would be those who for reasons of political espionage or religious idealism wish to make attacks against the country and might wish to establish alternate identities.

"The second area is organized crime," he said. "Some groups are very well funded, particularly the narcotics cartels. If they can establish new identities or takeover someone's identity who is clean criminally, they may get less suspicion when transporting things across the border."

Could Obama's records have been 'fixed?'

WND has been on the forefront of investigating claims that Barack Obama may not be a "natural born citizen," as the Constitution requires, and thus ineligible to serve as president of the United States.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed alleging Obama was born in Africa, rather than Hawaii, as Obama insists, and others have been filed claiming that Obama's birth status as a dual citizen because of his father's British citizenship precludes the sitting president from being "a natural born citizen."

In response to the lawsuits, Obama's campaign and administration have posted online images of a document purported to be the president's COLB from the state of Hawaii.

The computer-generated document, however, apparently printed after 2000, is exactly the kind of document WND's investigation has shown could have been produced from a database that had been fraudulently altered.

WND contacted the state of Hawaii to ask how its files are electronically managed, but a state official refused to answer even basic information requests and instead responded to emails by quoting articles from a website that routinely mocks and condemns WND's coverage.

WND then turned to Spafford to ask if Obama's COLB may have been compromised, but he dismissed the idea:

"His election was confirmed by Congress, and federal courts have rejected attempts to have the election invalidated, so … I think the question is moot at this point," he said.

He added, "There seems to be investigators who have scanned a copy of a long-form birth certificate with an official seal from the state of Hawaii, and the U.S. government accepts that."

On the contrary, the scanned copy is merely a COLB. Obama's long-form birth certificate remains among the many documents Obama has not disclosed the public, a list that also includes his Columbia thesis, his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records and any baptism records and his adoption records.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=122427

Orly has filed a Quo Warranto action in WDC.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25861986/Orly ... DC-1-25-10

Just watching Beck who states that this whole issue with Obama's NBC status is a ridiculous conspiracy theory. What is it that these people don't get? Do they not look at the information and investigations? Are we ALL nuts and he is right? If I am a nutcase and this whole thing is just a gigantic scheme to get Obama out of office? I want to know! I have never been a conspiracy theory follower but why is it that even supposedly even handed and truth seeking people like Beck completely blow this off? I am pissed and on the verge of giving up on this myself. Is there no justice?

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Just watching Beck who states that this whole issue with Obama's NBC status is a ridiculous conspiracy theory. What is it that these people don't get? Do they not look at the information and investigations? Are we ALL nuts and he is right? If I am a nutcase and this whole thing is just a gigantic scheme to get Obama out of office? I want to know! I have never been a conspiracy theory follower but why is it that even supposedly even handed and truth seeking people like Beck completely blow this off? I am pissed and on the verge of giving up on this myself. Is there no justice?

I once listened to a former CIA operative talk about conspiracies, and he convinced me that 1) there ARE real and very dangerous conspiracies, and 2) it's OK to believe they exist, and then learn from them.

So, I do.

What is sometimes a distraction is that there are also hidden agendas, and although hidden agendas could be considered conspiracies also, they are not usually malicious; rather simply self serving agendas.

In Beck's case, we would have to ask the question: In light of the obvious truth to the rumors about Obama, why would he discard them? Perhaps he wants to drag the story out forever, and if he solves the puzzle now, why would we continue to listen to him?

Who knows. I sure don't, but I also don't have any sacred cows that could be slaughtered by full and open disclosure. Beck, on the other hand, may have some.

Newest Alert, Please join in!!!

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-186708.html

Democrats suddenly interested in Obama birth certificate

Senate campaign director has plan to harm Republicans running for office

Posted: January 27, 2010
9:30 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

During this year's U.S. Senate races, it will be Democrats raising the issue of President Obama's eligibility to occupy the Oval Office.

Politico reported Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief Robert Menendez is distributing a memo to U.S. Senate campaign offices stating Democrats need to demand that their opponents answer a series of questions, including, "Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen?"

The report said Menendez wants to use the questions to "frame" opponents and "drive a wedge" between moderates belonging to the GOP and those who have adopted the tea party standards advocating limited government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and more freedom for Americans.

The Democrat memo said, "Given the pressure Republican candidates feel from the extreme right in their party, there is a critical – yet time-sensitive – opportunity for Democratic candidates.

"We have a finite window when Republicans candidates will feel susceptible to the extremists in their party. Given the urgent nature of this dynamic, we suggest an aggressive effort to get your opponents on the record."

The Politico report listed the following questions for Democrat to ask of Republican opponents:

* Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen?

* Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards?

* Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place?

* Do you think President Obama is a socialist?

* Do you think America should return to a gold standard?

The memo instructs that if a GOP candidate says no, make his or her "primary opponent or conservative activists know it."

Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

Democrats dominated the Senate agenda in President Obama's first year in office because of their filibuster-proof 60-40 vote majority. But since Republican Scott Brown's stunning victory in Massachusetts, winning a U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Ted Kennedy for nearly five decades, Menendez has urged his party's candidates to "run scared," Politico said.

The website for the Democrat committee already has started demonizing Republicans in the "tea party" movement challenging Washington's tax-and-spend agenda, massive health care takeover and plans for huge new energy taxes.

"Is the angry, irrational mob known as the 'Tea Party' one and the same as the Republican Party?" the site says. "After a summer of yelling about 'socialism' and 'death panels' at town hall meetings, they have mobilized behind a number of Republican Senate candidates. We saw how energized they were in Massachusetts. If more of these candidates are elected in November, it will become harder and harder to make any progress in Washington."

Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto questioned the logic of Democrats raising the eligibility issue.

"Are we given to understand that the Democrats intend to run for office by raising questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president?" he asked. "That has got to be the most brilliant campaign strategy since Michael Dukakis and Max Cleland raised questions about their own patriotism."

One participant in a forum at New Jersey.com said the Democrats obviously just don't understand the level of concern Americans have.

"Menendez you are so far out of touch you have no idea of what you talk about. You don't even know what the tea [party] movement stands for. You somehow think they are all right wing conservatives. How wrong you are. They are from every walk of life from all parties and none. They represent everything good in this country and what has made us great. Thats (sic) something you and yours will never understand. All you know is take take take and spend spend spend. Thats (sic) what the teabager movement wants to stop."

WND has reported efforts to raise the question of Obama's eligibility at the state and national levels. Several state legislatures are working on proposals that would require presidential candidates to submit proof of their eligibility.

Since Obama's election, numerous lawsuits have been filed alleging he did not meet the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural born citizen." The lawsuits have asserted he either was not born in Hawaii as he claims or was a dual citizen because of his father's British citizenship at the time of his birth.

The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

However, none of the cases filed to date has been successful in reaching the plateau of legal discovery, so that information about Obama's birth could be obtained.

Among the states where election qualification or eligibility requirements are being considered or developed include Oklahoma, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Virginia, New York and others.

The proposals essentially are moving the same direction as a federal measure proposed by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla.

Posey's H.R. 1503 states:

"To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution."

The bill also provides:

"Congress finds that under … the Constitution of the United States, in order to be eligible to serve as President, an individual must be a natural born citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 35 years and has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years."

The sponsors' goal is for the bill to become effective for the 2012 presidential election. The legislation now is pending in a House committee and has more than a dozen co-sponsors.

Key to the arguments over Obama is the fact is original long-form birth certificate never has been released. A second significant factor is the multitude of documents that Obama has kept from the public.

Besides his actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

Thirdly, another significant factor is the estimated $1.7 million Obama has spent on court cases to prevent any of the documentation of his life to be revealed to the public.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123375

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Just watching Beck who states that this whole issue with Obama's NBC status is a ridiculous conspiracy theory. What is it that these people don't get? Do they not look at the information and investigations? Are we ALL nuts and he is right?

TexasBorn, yes, we are, and, no, he isn't. The injustice of the usurpation is driving us mad, but that doesn't make its victims any the less intimidated and coerced. The politicians, judges, and media personalities know that Mr. Obama is not Constitutionally eligible for the office of President. But the globalists and Is|amists forbid them to act upon that knowledge or say it on the air or in print.

The puppet media, controlled by the global governance European elites of finance and commerce, do the devil's bidding while they hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Case in point: Lou Dobbs made an issue of Mr. Obama's eligibility on CNN, and shortly thereafter, someone shot at his house, and he "resigned" from CNN.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal holds 7% of News Corp. (FOX News), making him the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family. Sean Hannity brought up the issue of Mr. Obama's eligibility on FOX News, but after five minutes, he was silenced, never to speak about it again. Read Mus|im Mafia.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter promised to try Barnett and Keyes v. Obama on the merits. But a couple of months later, he was a changed man, with a former Perkins Coie attorney as his new law clerk, and his signature on the dismissal of the case for lack of standing.

For those persons of influence who cannot be bought, threats against their family members probably suffice to intimidate and coerce them.

For those who can be neither bought nor threatened, there is always the fate of Quarles Harris.

• When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory;
  But when the wicked arise, men hide themselves.
  
  Like a roaring lion and a charging bear
  Is a wicked ruler over poor people.
  
  When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
  But when a wicked man rules, the people groan.
  
  - Proverbs 28:12, 15; 29:2

Unless he shows his birth certificate he is hiding something.

TexasBorn,

Also understand that not everyone gets it or wants to get it. Here in Maine we have a forum identified as 'As Maine Goes' and I have posted recently (after a long absence) on the subject that never goes away. After a few days of what I considered informative postings regarding Obama's eligibility, the forum was locked.

You can read about my intellectual adventure into the minds of Maine here:

http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/stor ... zen?page=7

The editor posted one final message before he locked the forum that said:


HJ -

I really don't want your singular interest in this topic to be the reason this topic remains forever on page 1 of AMG's Public Square. It is a topic, as I've written before on AMG, that someone should either vow to resolve or, failing that, let the topic alone. But short of major breakthroughs of proof positive news regarding the president's origin of birth - I have zero interest in dedicating as much of AMG to this topic as you seem to think the topic warrants.

I recommend you start your own blog. You can do so for free here and here. Then if you run across breatkthroughs as I've defined them - we can talk about your sharing them with AMGers.


Open minded people and truth seekers always frustrate close minded people.

I have since received correspondence from other AMG posters who have expressed concern with the forum shutdown. I should note that this is the second forum on this topic (that I am aware of) AMG has shut down. Why?

How's that old saying go... 'there are none so blind as those who will not see... unless it is those who will not look.'

Originally Posted by MinutemanCDC_SC

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Just watching Beck who states that this whole issue with Obama's NBC status is a ridiculous conspiracy theory. What is it that these people don't get? Do they not look at the information and investigations? Are we ALL nuts and he is right?

TexasBorn, yes, we are, and, no, he isn't. The injustice of the usurpation is driving us mad, but that doesn't make its victims any the less intimidated and coerced. The politicians, judges, and media personalities know that Mr. Obama is not Constitutionally eligible for the office of President. But the globalists and Is|amists forbid them to act upon that knowledge or say it on the air or in print.

The puppet media, controlled by the global governance European elites of finance and commerce, do the devil's bidding while they hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Case in point: Lou Dobbs made an issue of Mr. Obama's eligibility on CNN, and shortly thereafter, someone shot at his house, and he "resigned" from CNN.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal holds 7% of News Corp. (FOX News), making him the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family. Sean Hannity brought up the issue of Mr. Obama's eligibility on FOX News, but after five minutes, he was silenced, never to speak about it again. Read Mus|im Mafia.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter promised to try Barnett and Keyes v. Obama on the merits. But a couple of months later, he was a changed man, with a former Perkins Coie attorney as his new law clerk, and his signature on the dismissal of the case for lack of standing.

For those persons of influence who cannot be bought, threats against their family members probably suffice to intimidate and coerce them.

For those who can be neither bought nor threatened, there is always the fate of Quarles Harris.

• When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory;
  But when the wicked arise, men hide themselves.
  
  Like a roaring lion and a charging bear
  Is a wicked ruler over poor people.
  
  When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
  But when a wicked man rules, the people groan.
  
  - Proverbs 28:12, 15; 29:2

Why isn't the print media being used by those who claim to have vital information on Obama's illegitimacy? Full page ads? There are SOME newspapers, etc. that are not yet in Obama's pocket. We all know that none of these lawsuits will get their day in court. NONE! We hang on to this thread of hope but deep down we know that our courts and judges won't walk that plank. We are in deep.