Author Topic: Fr. Niklaus Pflugers letter to Bishop Williamson (Read 22867 times)

VinnyF · « **Reply #85 on:** April 17, 2013, 04:26:52 PM »

Quote from: Ethelred

Now some technical boring details. Uninterested readers, please skip it. :-)

Quote
but the Creator Property in a .docx file is set by Microsoft Word to indicate what application created the docuмent, NOT who the author is.

No, sir. MS-Word or Open-/Libreoffice or any other Office application which can write MS-Word files, uses the docuмent file's "created by" property to set the author who created the file, and the time-stamp when he did so.

During the installation process of Office applications (or for some: when a user starts the application for the very first time), they typically ask for the first and last name, initials, company, and several other Office properties.
Smart administrators, companies, schools or smart users set these properties on a per-user basis. So actually every user on a multi-user computer can have his own name in a typical Office's configuration.

Either way, once you create a new docuмent file -- no matter if it's an OpenDocuмent, a ".doc" Word or a ".docx" Word file -- the Office application writes these name, company, etc user properties into the docuмent file's properties.
And this is the whole idea of these Office file properties, so that when several authors work on the same docuмent file (at different times), you nicely see who created and who changed what and when.

I did just check it in practice with an Open-/Libreoffice installation for several users on a single machine, and indeed the Office file's properties say in my native language (translated on-the-fly to English): "Created on: 17 April 2013, 21:35:00, <My First Name, My Last Name>".
And when you open the Pfluger-Letter, you see the very same properties dialogue and it says: "Created on: 6 Jan 2011, 16:29:00, MK28".
And you open the docProps folder of that ".docx" zip file, and in the core.xml there's these meta informations like author ("MK28" in our case), saving time-stamp, etc, as it should be according to the "Office Open XML" Wiki.

Now, VinniF, or somebody else, please repeat these steps with your Office installation -- provided your Office's name, initials etc properties are not empty -- in order to verify that indeed the user's Office name/initials properties go rightly into a created Office docuмent file. No "tampering" needed. And no "forgery" needed. Just save-as, close, and open-file menu.

Ethel,

Perhaps you are efficient in German-English translation. But you are apparently not with Word 2007 - which is the version of Word that creates a docx file.

Firstly, I was very specifically responding to your posts where you specifically talk about the Creator tag. The Creator tag has NOTHING to do with the author.

In this post you now talk about the Author tag. In MS Office 2007, the author tag is only set if you execute the Word options and choose to enter and have your name and initials recorded in a docuмent. Neither Max's name nor initials are MK28. However, if your Author tag does say "Pfluger, Nikolaus", you can easily change it to "MK28" if that suits you better.

Your factual proof that this originated on Max Krah's computer doesn't exist. And that was my main problem with your post.

VinnyF · « **Reply #86 on:** April 17, 2013, 04:30:45 PM »

Quote from: Ethelred

Quote
If the Creator Property says MK28, it was purposely modified by someone,

No, and everybody can verify it by creating an own Office docuмent, close it, reload it and examine the the file's properties: shows the verify-er's Office user's name, save time, etc.

Since the "created by" property in the Pfluger-Letter says "MK28", the logical conclusion is that on the computer which was used to create this docuмent -- let's name this computer Maxxielaptop for a moment -- either the administrator set the Office's name/initials property to "MK28" during the installation of the Office application, or a Windows user who created this letter file on the Maxxielaptop set the Office's initials property to "MK28" once.

Now "coincidentally" these initials "MK28" are also Krah Internet pseudonym used to post his many hundreds of articles on German Internet forums, when he started doing so at the age of 28. Of course this is no 100% proof because really some other friends of Fr Pfluger could also use these initials "MK28". But it's a good indication.

If you send the file to me, I guarantee that I can send it back to you and the author will be Ethelred. Will it be fair when I accuse you of writing the letter?

Incredulous · « **Reply #87 on:** April 17, 2013, 08:23:25 PM »

VinnyF,

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this test would prove anything?

You and Ethelred would exchange docs: German(software) <---> USA(software).

The Pflugy letter was German based software with a very different process path and delivery flow:

Dresden ---> Stuttgart (1x)
Stuttgart <-----> Menzingen (10xs)
Menzingen <-------> Dresden (16xs)
Menzingen ----> Stuttgart ---> Wimbledon (1x)

We weren't born yesterday.

There were many dirty hands formulating this letter before it ever reached the Lion's laptop, in his attic prison.

Ethelred · « **Reply #88 on:** April 18, 2013, 07:32:44 AM »

Three days ago I attached to this thread an Office docuмent named "PNP an BW.docx".
It's the original German letter which the Swiss-German Fr Pfluger sent electronically to the British Bishop Williamson, and it has not been altered after the sending and receiving process.

The docuмent's file format is Open XML (invented by Microsoft), which many Office programs can write. According to the docuмent's metadata, the Application tag in the app.xml file inside that docx file-container shows that Fr Pfluger and his helpers used Microsoft Office Word to create that letter.
(Other Office programs like Libreoffice write LibreOffice/version$platform to this tag when they export an Open XML file.)

Vinney, you apparently confuse this Application tag inside the app.xml file with the dc:creator tag inside the core.xml file used to store the Office's author/user name (not "MSWD"), like I said yesterday. Also see citation below.
And based on this confusion you apparently claim that my upload is a "forged" docuмent.

Now it's possible without much effort to inspect your claims by examining docuмent files in the OpenXML format in general, and this letter in particular. Readers who create an own docx-file, or use received ones, or use the uploaded one, will see.

When creating own docx-files, the concerning metadata properties are only in effect if during or after the Office installation, the user/admin entered a name, initials, company etc properties into the Office installation. This is the case with the Pfluger-Letter: it has a "MK28" creator tag inside its core.xml file, a "Columbia Business School" Company tag inside its app.xml file.

Quote

The Creator tag has NOTHING to do with the author.

It has, see citation below. You just confuse the tags.

You, Vinny, told us the the creator tag (which is inside the "core.xml" file) would be used to identify the application which produced the docuмent file. This is not correct.
The dc:creator tag inside the core.xml file of a docx file-container is used to hold the Office user's name.

Quote

Neither Max's name nor initials are MK28.

Well, for hundreds of his Internet articles in German language Max Krah's initials actually are "MK28". And these initials are in the Pfluger-Letter file, too.

Quote

Your factual proof that this originated on Max Krah's computer doesn't exist. And that was my main problem with your post.

Indeed the creator name "MK28" in the Pfluger-Letter is no hard proof to stand up in court, for Max Krah having created this docuмent. Because also Fr Pfluger or one of his other friends could have these initials for their Office installations.
Still the "MK28" field is an obvious indicator and complements the Pfluger-Letter's content, style and phraseology which all underline the co-authorship of Krah.

Quote from: VinnyF

If you send the file to me, I guarantee that I can send it back to you and the author will be Ethelred. Will it be fair when I accuse you of writing the letter?

Another straw-man. Question is, why do you need them?
Fact is Fr Pfluger sent his Pfluger-Letter to Bishop Williamson, with no Vinny or Ethelred between them.

So, if Fr Pfluger's file really had been tampered with, then it would have happened in Menzingen. But then the big question was: Why? Why do they insert into their Pfluger-Letter -- which has Krah's textual fingerprints all over the place -- the creator property "MK28" to have, quote: "a vested interest in making sure that [a] link between this letter and Krah was more than speculation" ? When the link is obvious anyway. I think this is a not so convincing "conspiracy theory".

I prefer to stay with the evidence, which is: In the Office installation which Fr Pfluger and his friends used to create or edit the Pfluger-Letter, they once entered during or after installation, "MK28" into the name field and "Columbia Business School" into the company field.
Of course we've absolutely no idea why they would do so. :-)

---------

Citation from http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Word_Docuмent_%28DOCX%29

Quote

Word Docuмent (DOCX)
...
DOCX is written in an XML format, which consists of a ZIP archive file containing XML and binaries. Content can be analysed without modification by unzipping the file (e.g. in WinZIP) and analysing the contents of the archive.

The file _rels/.rels contains information about the structure of the docuмent. It contains paths to the metadata information as well as the main XML docuмent that contains the content of the docuмent itself.

Metadata information are usually stored in the folder docProps. Two or more XML files are stored inside that folder, app.xml that stores metadata information extracted from the Word application itself and core.xml that stores metadata from the docuмent itself, such as the author name, last time it was printed, etc.

Another folder contains the actual content of the docuмent, in a Word docuмent, or an .docx docuмent the folder's name is word. A XML file called docuмent.xml is the main docuмent, containing most of the content of the docuмent itself.

Ethelred · « **Reply #89 on:** April 18, 2013, 07:34:40 AM »

Now I just posted a verbose "reply", when in reality the following would do:

Since you, Vinny, claim that my uploaded docuмent is "forged" (not neccessarily by me, you added, but forged): please proof it. Yes, let's be Thomistic and proof it.

No need to repeat the claim that "it's forged", but prove it: Tell us the exact location and data inside the "PNP an BW.docx" file which is "forged", and what it should look like if is was not "forged".