It's looking bad -- for Dan Wolfe

This may seem like an overly technical post to you, but it isn't -- not really.

EXIF data is also called metadata. Basically, when you snap a picture on your iPhone or digital camera, you are also making a small file which records for posterity some information about how that picture originated: The kind of camera used, the date, the size of the image and so forth.

As I explained in the previous post, EXIF data is not foolproof evidence. If, say, you use Photoshop to paste Image B over Image A, Image B will have the EXIF data for Image A. You can also use certain apps to switch out the data, just as you can rewrite the ID tag for an mp3 file.

Let's say someone claims that he has snapped a photo of Bigfoot. If the photographer can't give you EXIF data to go with the image, he's almost certainly scamming you. If he does give you EXIF data, he may still be scamming. The presence of EXIF data is no guarantee of authenticity, but its absence is a pretty good indication of fraudulence.

Now study the chart above. In the case of Dan Wolfe's browser cache version of the now-infamous lewd photo, we have a decided lack of EXIF data. That is to say: We don't have any indication as to the camera used to snap the shot.

If you bring a raw photo into Photoshop, copy it, paste it into a new file, and then save that file, the result will have EXIF data similar to what Dan is showing us here. You'll get information about format (dimensions and such) but no information about the camera used.

So what happened in this case?

Conceivably, it is possible that Yfrog created this 800 by 600 image as a copy of the original. (We'll explain more about that very soon.) But there is a problem here. To understand this problem, you have to pay attention to the following data (which comes from a Wolfe-friendly site).

This version of the image is exact same size as the original uploaded to yfrog, 800 x 600 pixels.

Yfrog has three different versions of every file. The first is the thumbnail sized image found in user’s profiles. The second image is a medium size quality (the version of the photo we have), and the third is the higher quality. Users can access higher quality photos by clicking on the first image. @PatriotUSA76 told me he had not clicked through the file, which is the reason he only had the medium quality version.

Dan is PatriotUSA76. The problems should now be obvious.

1. Where's the thumbnail? That should be on the browser cache as well -- if Dan really did get these images from Yfrog.

2. Dan has established a record of being absolutely obsessed with Anthony Weiner. Why wouldn't he click through to the original photo? If he's savvy enough to know what EXIF data is, why did he avoid going to the image that would contain it?

3. If Dan really did retrieve this photo from his browser cache, he should be able to give us the entire page, including a date stamp. He should also be able to call up that page via History in Firefox. Hey, the guy says he has nothing to hide, right? I'm not the only one to question whether he really got this image from a visit to YFrog.

4. Most importantly: In my experience, Yfrog does not make 800x600 photos. The medium-sized image that Yfrog creates is 640x480, which also happens to be the dimensions of the photo as it appeared on Breitbart's site.

5. If 800X600 is the "exact same size as the original uploaded to yfrog," then Dan did click through to the largest size. And that means that all of the EXIF data ought to be present. If the photo is authentic, we should have camera data which matches that of Weiner's blackberry.

How do I know that Yfrog does not create 800x600 intermediate images? Because I made an experiment involving an uploaded photo of my dog Bella. Here she is. The original is 2592 by 1944, even larger than the photo made by Weiner's Blackberry. You can click through to that large version, download, look at the EXIF data, and discover which camera I used. The medium-sized version of the Bella shot is 640 by 480.

No matter how or where I click on that Yfrog site, I can't get at an 800 by 600 version.

(Incidentally, you can acquire most of the EXIF data by downloading the image, right-clicking it, then clicking on the "Details" tab. There's more data to be found, but it's harder to get at.)

Why would there be both a 640X480 version and an 800x600 version of the image on Dan's computer? Why would Yfrog create four different files when Dan Wolfe comes a-visiting, while everyone else gets only three? If the 800X600 version represents Weiner's uploaded original, then why did the crucial EXIF information go missing? Why don't we know anything about the camera which made the picture?

Again: The only person who claims to have seen the Weiner crotch shot in situ is Dan. Maybe a few of his cohorts might back up his claims, but I know of no-one objective who can say that he saw it there.

Weiner says that his account was hacked. That may be presumption on his part. He believes that his Twitter account was hacked because there was a concurrent attempt to hack into his Facebook account. But he has never claimed to have seen the photo on his Yfrog page.

So we really have no proof that the Weiner crotch photo was ever uploaded to Yfrog. We have no proof that the screen cap which appeared on Breitbart's site was real.

Dan, your browser's History probably holds at least seven day's worth of material. If you really have nothing to hide, then show the entirety of the Yfrog pages that you visited -- the one with the thumbnail and the one with the 800x600 image. (You know about screen capture videos, don't you? I believe CamStudio is freeware.)

I think you should also give us an explanation as to why Yfrog created an 800x600 image for you but not for me.

Until then -- I detect the odor of bullshit. Or maybe we need to coin a new term: Breitshit.