Re: Worship of paper
I ... have been perpetually amazed by the insistence of so many organisations on seeing the original documents ("wet signed", one of them called it, I think)....
Repeatedly I ask: what's wrong with a copy, or even just the Ref Code? Surely no one would trust a supposed original (given the power of photoshopping, these days)
Forging originals is harder work that you might suppose. Anyone who is used to handling such things can easily determine the difference between even a good colour photocopy (or 'shopped image printed out) and an original signed document: wet ink, whether it be from a fountain pen, a gel ink pen, or BIC/Biro is easily determinable as different to inkjet, laser or even dye sublimation printer output. It is made even easier if a BIC/Biro is used, as the indentation in the paper made by the ball can be seen - which, of course, won't be there in a copy.
For 'official' print outs (such as birth certificates and driving licences), the originals can be unusual size papers that don't fit onto photocopiers or scanners easily, and contain watermarks, microprinting* (for examples, look at Pound Sterling banknotes), or use special papers with embedded fibres (again banknotes, before they became plastic, had this). Many official documents are embossed, which is again, not easily reproducible. Really old documents could be sealed with an impression from a seal on a molten wax glob dripped onto the document (hence 'sealing wax' used to be sold by stationers, looking like a odd brittle red candle - you lit the wick and dropped wax onto the document in question).
Obviously, these days, with bank statements and utility bills being sent as downloadable pdfs, asking for originals of those might be a bit pointless**, but many official documents are still made difficult to reproduce by the methods I have outlined above. There are other methods.
NN
*Headed notepaper or other special stationery can incorporate features that are not easily reproducible on common printers - microprinting is obvious, but using special inks is another possibility that is also used: e.g. some forms will have features only visible when viewed with ultra-violet light; or portions of the form can be made in ferromagnetic ink; or ink in colours known not to register well with scanners can be used. Adding a serial number that is recorded in a separate register can also be used to validate originals - while the serial number can easily be copied or modified in a forgery, you can't easily add a new entry to a central register, or know what details are recorded separately and can be cross referenced with your supposed original.
**There are also techniques that allow one to detect if a pdf of a bank statement has different information on it than the original, as the content can be encoded in non-obvious ways as a type of digital watermark***.
***You may not know, but a large proportion, if not most commercially available colour inkjet printers embed a unique identifier in documents they print by using a pattern of yellow dots. Organisations using inkjet printers for important documents could know those identifiers for it's own printers, and therefore be able to state that a document with a different identifier was not an original. See:
Wikipedia:Machine Identification Code
EFF's "Yellow Dots of Mystery" on Instructables
EFF: List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots
Note that it is this technique that helped the America authorities track down Reality Winner.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
