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Government Microsoft Software Politics

Calibri Font Plays Its Role: Pakistan Now Sans Sharif as Prime Minister is Disqualified (neowin.net) 93

Posted by msmash from the caught-red-handed dept.
Usama Jawad, writing for Neowin: A few weeks ago, we reported that Microsoft's Calibri font has been used as evidence against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family in a corruption case. Today, Sharif has been disqualified from his position as a part of the court's final verdict of the case. The case concerns the "Panama Papers", which is a collection of 11.5 million documents detailing information related to over 200,000 offshore accounts. Ever since the Panama Papers were anonymously leaked back in 2015, there has been a major shift in the political situation in many countries. One such country is Pakistan, where the names of numerous members of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family were spotted in the papers. If you aren't aware of the Calibri controversy, it is as follows: Nawaz Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz submitted photocopies of several documents in order to deny any corruption, but it appears that the documents contained Microsoft's Calibri font, even though they were dated February 6, 2006. It is important to note that the font wasn't commercially available until much later. Despite being created in 2004, the font did not reach the general public until January 30, 2007.
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Calibri Font Plays Its Role: Pakistan Now Sans Sharif as Prime Minister is Disqualified More

Calibri Font Plays Its Role: Pakistan Now Sans Sharif as Prime Minister is Disqualified

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  • Sans Sharif (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28, 2017 @09:45AM (#54898239)

    Come on, now.

    • Re: Sans Sharif (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What's really sad is I'll bet a fair number of us were hoping for this outcome, just for the bad pun setup.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The headline STILL makes no sense. Something tells me that Miss Mash was born without a cerebral cortex.

    • In Pakistani politics, the Times Roman, they are a-changin'...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sharif don't like it.. Rock the casbah!

      How come no article about the Awan brothers and their IT involvement in the government? Far more "on-topic" around here than the trannies in military article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xevioso ( 598654 )

      Why the hate? It's a Helvetica joke, after all.

    • It's ripped directly from reddit, where it was a top comment yesterday to a similar story, and that comment was probably ripped from somewhere else too.

  • Slashdot headline of the year. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @09:45AM (#54898241)

    Bravo.

  • "Sans Sharif" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Verdatum ( 1257828 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @09:45AM (#54898253)
    Worstest pun I think I've ever seen on /. Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!....OK, maybe I smiled a little.
  • Well played, sir...well played
  • I just wanted to congratulate the submitter. News for nerds and a grade A pun in one go. Well done.

  • So using Microsoft products... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So using Microsoft products can indeed make you loose your job!

  • Sharif don't like it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @10:05AM (#54898383) Homepage
    Rock the Calibri! Rock the Calibri!
    • This should be a big wakeup call to all C[E|O|I|T|X]O's to not use Microsoft products. Ever.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slew ( 2918 )

        This should be a big wakeup call to all C[E|O|I|T|X]O's to not use Microsoft products. Ever.

        FWIW, you can generally use Helvetica (1957) or Ariel (1982) fonts (even on Microsoft products). But if you want an "open" font,... your options are limited.

        Only DejaVu Sans (2004) would probably be the only font that fit the appropriate required timeframe, but it isn't the most popular default today on open source only distributions which are LiberationSans(2010), FreeSans (2010) Open Sans (2011). In addition to the Carlito font which is their replacement for Calibri (which by definition places it even l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          FWIW, you can generally use Helvetica (1957) or Ariel (1982) fonts (even on Microsoft products). But if you want an "open" font,... your options are limited.

          Only DejaVu Sans (2004) would probably be the only font that fit the appropriate required timeframe, but it isn't the most popular default today on open source only distributions which are LiberationSans(2010), FreeSans (2010) Open Sans (2011). In addition to the Carlito font which is their replacement for Calibri (which by definition places it even lat

  • What is this, where am I, what year is it.

  • And I would have gotten away with it too. If it hadn't been for those meddling Sans Sherif fonts.

  • What are you, some kind of Comic Sans?

  • Oh, well that's just great! >:( (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @10:30AM (#54898579)

    Sure, Sans Sharif was corrupt but still, nobody is looking forward to Prime Minister Komik Sans. ;)

  • You know, we give the OPs a lot of crap for non-tech, repetitive, political news.

    But that has to be one of the best title/article postings in years.

    "Calibri Font Plays Its Role: Pakistan Now Sans Sharif"

    Well played, sir/madam.

  • The Calibri font was definitely available although not immediately commercial, alpha and release candidate versions of Office containing the font appeared as early as 2005.

    • Re:Bad lawyers/researchers (Score:5, Informative)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @12:18PM (#54899393)

      The Calibri font was definitely available although not immediately commercial, alpha and release candidate versions of Office containing the font appeared as early as 2005.

      I can't decide whether you're trying to point out an interesting, but not dispositive fact, or whether this is an example of typical Slashdot lawyering. Preponderance of the evidence, or even "reasonable doubt," does not turn on whether one can construct an improbable situation in which documents could be authored using Calibri.

      They've thought of that [samaa.tv].
      ---
      "The first public beta version, according to a Wikipedia entry, was released on June 6, 2006 -- close to four months after the papers were said to have been signed by Maryam Nawaz."

      * * *

      "Responding personally to the question separately, font designer de Groot said, 'While in theory it would have been possible to create a document using Calibri in 2006, the font would have to be obtained from a beta operating system, from the hands of computer nerds'.

      'Why would anyone use a completely unknown font for an official document in 2006?' he went on to question.

      'If the person using Calibri was such a font lover that he or she had to use the new Calibri, then he or she should be able to prove that other documents were printed with Calibri in 2006, and these prints should be in the hands of other people as well,' he wrote his email addressed to the newspaper."
      ---

      That last bit is the pertinent question. If you're arguing that the documents are authentic, where are the other 'official documents prepared using Calibri' that would have been prepared at the same time? Even if the government copies of the Nawaz documents were lost, where are the government copies of those other non-Nawaz Calibri documents? Do the government's records of documents prepared at that time ever contain ones prepared in Calibri?

  • Panama papers vs wikileaks (Score:3)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @10:49AM (#54898703)
    The Panama papers have done more than Wikileaks with much less publishing. More hacks along those lines, exposing the 1%, is how reform can be accomplished. Its the best use of the NSAs all seeing power that I can think of, even if it is a pipe dream.
  • ... of a certain major news network waving around a Microsoft Word generated document to "prove" that a certain president had dodged the Vietnam War draft ...
    • That is actually an excellent point. Just as those documents didn't change the fact that Bush was a draft dodger, these documents don't prove Sharif is guilty. The major difference here, of course, is that Calibri was in fact available whereas Word definitely did not exist when Bush dodged the draft. It seems to have escaped the press that Sharif was not a member of the general public on the documents purported creation date.

  • The first time I saw fonts at the center of an investigation was the CBS story about George W. Bush's military service. The CBS news story presented a document from the 1970s that was supposedly from an IBM Selectric typewriter when in fact it was from an Apple Macintosh using Microsoft Word default settings and a Palatino font. At the time, I was surprised to see how obvious the forgery was, and how easily it was exposed. Without this case, I wonder if anyone would have investigated the Calibri font in Pak

    • I can guarantee that the Bush Draft Dodge was far from the first time font analysis was used, and that font forensics predates computers by a very long time.

      • Before computers, there were typewriters (almost all of which used a Courier font). There was forensic analysis of typed documents, based mostly on matching tiny artifacts and inconsistencies to individual typewriters or possibly a brand/model of typewriter. Modern font forensics is a whole lot easier if all you care about is establishing the approximate year when a font became available. In the Killian documents case, nobody cared about matching the documents to the original typewriter or printer, they

        • Fonts existed not only well before typewriters, but well before Gutenburg, and have been used to refute and help confirm the validity of ancient texts. Good luck learning about fonts!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      The CBS news story presented a document from the 1970s that was supposedly from an IBM Selectric typewriter when in fact it was from an Apple Macintosh using Microsoft Word default settings and a Palatino font

      Sure presenting it as the original typed document; would be fairly obvious as forgery. But that doesn't necessarily mean the original doesn't exist somewhere else; and we're looking at a reprint/copy from OCR made 20 years ago on a mac that got then got 'discovered'.

      Now, I'm not saying that is the case with George Bush's military service, or even that it is probable or possible in that particular case.

      I'm just saying "haha document was printed from word, not on an IBM selectric, case closed" isn't really va

      • Was the reprint of your short story presented as an original document by CBS news? I doubt it. Would you try to use your LaserWriter print to prove that you wrote the story as a kid with your TRS-80? Lotsa luck.

        Quoted text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        The purveyor of the documents, Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, claims to have burned the originals after faxing copies to CBS.

        How incredibly convenient. If I didn't know better, I'd say someone didn't want the paper or toner to be analyzed, not realizing that the font was already a problem.

        In the 60 Minutes segment, anchor Dan Rather stated: "We are told [the documents] were taken from Lieutenant Colonel Killian’s personal files" and incorrectly asserted that "the material" had been authenticated by experts retained by CBS.

        Either CBS producers knew it was a computer-generated print and thought nobody wo

  • Sans Sharriffe? (Score:5, Informative)

    by colinwb ( 827584 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @11:55AM (#54899187)
    The pun might not be new, but it was new to me, and I enjoyed it's aptness. I also hope that the pun was partly a nod in the direction of the (un?)famous 1977 April Fools' Day extended hoax by The Guardian: San Serriffe [wikipedia.org]

  • They must not have heard of Dan Rather (Score:4, Insightful)

    by robkeeney ( 1061032 ) on Friday July 28, 2017 @12:41PM (#54899609)

    You'd think that people would know better than to just toss something off on their computer and back date it by now.The internet will find you out!

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