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FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

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Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#271

Post by TaylorAlexander »

sjtindell wrote: post #255
lemax wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's intentionally designed to do this, but that it's a consequence. There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design.

What’s happening with voter suppression in the US today is contrary to that. Many people are petty and callous. It’s reality. They literally want everyone they don’t like to leave.

Yes they’ve been using the phrase “ensuring voter quality” to justify measures which essentially restrict access to voting for the poor.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#272

Post by lucb1e »

maupin wrote: post #87
heydonovan wrote: post #71

I hate PDF's with a passion. Not once have I ever wanted to use one. All the pinching and zooming, such a waste of time. I'm giving this a shot next time I need one, the whole scanner thing needs to go. Are we stuck in the 90's? Just bought another rental and it was an ordeal trying to find a scanner. Tried the college near me, was denied as you have to be a student. The library is closed down apparently. FedEx didn'…

> All the pinching and zooming, such a waste of time. Sounds like what you really hate are mobile device displays.

When is the last time you had to pinch and zoom on a website? Text can reflow perfectly well, if you give the renderer the necessary information. With PDF, similar to PNG, you're specifically telling the renderer to put this pixel exactly over there and nowhere else, so it cannot nicely make it all be readable comfortably.

If mobile devices required zooming and panning to read anything, they'd not be popular at all, so they're apparently not where the problem lies.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#273

Post by jaycroft »

mNovak wrote: post #183
jaycroft wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an HR administrator for a small business, this absolutely grinds my gears. According to every accountant and consultant I've ever talked to, the "wet signature" rule is enshrined in federal law (although I have yet to be able to find out exactly where). It applies to all brokerage operations (opening your custodial accounts); employee applications (even internal to your own company that never leave your own filing…

Not sure if it's new, but I just recently filed a 5500 online. You can do it here: https://www.efast.dol.gov/welcome.html But yes, dealing with brokerage forms that needed a wet signature faxed..

My mistake on the 5500 - we have a consultant / tax preparer that files the actual form for us, so it does look like the actual filing is electronic. What I was incorrectly remembering, it turns out, was that the authorization form for our consultant to electronically file needed a wet signature.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#274

Post by lucb1e »

globular-toast wrote: post #136

I had to do this! It was a 3-4 page document and I thought printing and scanning was stupid, but did it anyway. Naturally I only printed and scanned the last page with the signature on it. They rejected it saying I had to print and scan the entire document ! I would be very tempted to use something like this next time, however I have a feeling that the same people who think this is sane would accuse you of fraud if t…

I've done this sort of thing often (and more quick&dirty) and nobody had an issue with it yet. Just put a good quality signature on the doc and then export the whole thing as fairly low quality. Making the signature blue and the rest of the document black and white probably also helps. But I never even needed that much.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#275

Post by obert »

If you have MacOS, open the PDF with "Preview" and you can add your scanned signature using

    Tools->Annotate->Signature
You can have multiple signatures ready to use (see Annotate->Manage Signatures), e.g. multiple variations of yours, so they don't look all the same when signing a doc multiple times.

When including a signature you can position and resize it, e.g. to adjust for layout, font size, etc.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#276

Post by roughly »

solveit wrote: post #248
scarby2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no good reason anyone would intentionally want to keep the poor poor, it's just bad design. We need people to feel pressured into doing shitty jobs, if the poor get less poor maybe they won't flip burgers for minimum wage.

Who is "We" and how do they coordinate this? Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy (Usually. Occasionally governments intentionally wage "war" on a group of people, but this is not the typical case.).

> Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy

Except that when everyone knows what a poverty trap is, how they form, how to spot them, and what to do about them, and none of that gets done, we start to fall on the opposite side of Hanlon’s razor. It’s not like that scholarship is new or controversial, so why is this still a problem?

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#277

Post by mrb »

ca7 wrote: post #241
mrb wrote: post #184

I have a shell script based on ImageMagick that gives a PDF a "scanner" look. I typically open the PDF in Master PDF Editor to insert an image of my signature, then pass it through my script. When I do need it, it's rare, but it becomes a real life saver. It has avoided me the need to print and scan 100+ pages for a mortgage company, some stock brokers and banks. Key points of the script: "+noise Random -fill white -…

Thanks for this! "-flatten" results in all PDF pages being rendered into a 1 page PDF output. If "-flatten" is removed, I get a multi-page PDF output as expected. Thoughts? EDIT: "-flatten" does what it is supposed to. Delete if operating on multipage PDF.

Weird. I could swear "-flatten" didn't behave like this years ago when I last used my script. But maybe I am misremember...

Edit: haha! The "-flatten" needs to be replaced with "-alpha flatten". This way, multi-page documents are still handled correctly, and alpha transparency is also handled correctly. I just tried on this sample file with transparent images: https://tcpdf.org/files/examples/example_042.pdf

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#278

Post by gyulai »

lucb1e wrote: post #258
gyulai wrote: post #256

I think the author of this tool is totally missing the point of the print/sign/scan legal hoop that one sometimes has to jump through. The law sometimes requires certain documents to be "in writing" and there is, unfortunately, a legal tradition tied to this that "in writing" means "physically on paper", which many lawmakers and bureaucrats unfortunately haven't managed to properly transition into the digital age. Ho…

If that's the point, why does nobody ever say to keep the original? If the counterparty needs it, why don't they request you sign two copies and send them one? The idea that they would later want it for forensic evidence that you really did sign it seems odd: if it's in their benefit and you wanted it to not exist, and you're the one possessing that original copy... you can make it not exist.

I guess, when such administrative procedures are decided, then the kinds of considerations that go into it have to do with whether the document is more to your advantage or more to theirs. In a high stakes situation where the document is to their advantage (like you sign an employment agreement), they routinely will insist on having a signed original rather than just a copy or scan. In situations where the costs of dealing with paper originals outweigh the potential benefits, they might well not insist on having paper originals.

But, to come at it from the other side: If you want to make sure you can actually rely on the document in court, it's probably a good idea to keep originals and definitely a bad idea to use this FalsiScan tool.

The lowly-paid administrator who deals with you might not be able to detect the FalsiScan that you submit. But if something goes to court and it benefits them to undermine the forensic value of the document, then you might well find yourself faced with a digital forensics expert proving to the court that the document came from this FalsiScan tool. This opens the possibility that, for example, a third party with access to your computer that contains all the digital assets to create FalsiScans (like a scan of your signature) could have created the PDF.

It's not obvious that you would want to respond to that by saying "but I definitely definitely did use FalsiScan myself, meaning the PDF to represent my signature on the document".

If the other party can make it look like you purposefully sent something that would make it past their administrative procedures but would have questionable forensic value so that you could later have it thrown out in court, then you can no longer rely on the document yourself and could even be liable to damages that resulted from their relying on it.

If they can clear a slightly higher burden of proof in the general direction of fraud, they could even come after you criminally: Fraudulent creation of digital assets of forensic value (like scans of paper documents) is a criminal offence. -- At least in Germany; I don't know U.S. law that well.

That also applies to your original suggestion about making a document not exist whenever it serves your purpose for the document to not exist. ...that too is kind of a criminally relevant thing that you probably don't want to do.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#279

Post by divbzero »

seb1204 wrote: post #270
spapas82 wrote: post #235

For a project that you can use to actually sign (electronically of course) a PDF file or verify that a PDF file has a proper signature take a look a this: https://github.com/spapas/pdf-sign-check It uses org.bouncycastle and apache pdfbox and is completely open source. I'd be happy to help anybody that wants to use it in his organization! We use it sucessfully in my organization (public sector in Greece) for some yea…

Nice, but from my experience people don't know digitally signed PDF. They want paper with wet signatures or looking like wet signatures. On the other end of the scale I have seen pdfs signed with self created certificates or signed by mouse movement.

Yes, and in some contexts people seem to recognize digitally signed PDFs only when they “officially” processed by DocuSign, HelloSign, or a similar professional service.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#280

Post by letouj »

solveit wrote: post #254
dsr_ wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go to my local library and tell them you want a library card, but you don't have any ID, they ask you to give them your address. They send you a postcard, and when you bring it in, they'll give you a library card. No QR code necessary. The USPS could function quite successfully as an ID system and a bank, were they allowed.

In fact postal services in many countries do function as banks. When I was a primary school student in South Korea, we all made a savings account at the local post office and learned about how banks work and the importance of saving money.

And indeed the United States Postal Service itself operated a savings bank system from 1911 until 1967: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...
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