Questioned Documents Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Cylithography, thermal transfer and Cibachrome are colour copier processes.

Cylithography (the Cycolor process) uses microcapsules containing cyan, magenta and yellow dyes that are hardened by light and broken by pressure to form a colour image. Thermal transfer copiers melt coloured wax or dye from a ribbon onto the paper, and Cibachrome is a silver dye-bleach colour process. Document examiners classify colour copies by such processes.

Black-and-white copiers use processes such as electrophotography with a single toner. Scanning technology captures an image rather than printing it, and 'printing mechanism' is too general to name these specific colour reproduction processes.

Answer: A

Complexity in handwriting is judged by the number of times the pen changes direction.

A complex signature or writing has many strokes, turns, loops and changes of direction, each of which a forger must reproduce. Document examiners treat the number of direction changes as the measure of how complex a writing is, and so of how hard it would be to simulate and how much weight a match carries.

The fullness of curves and the degree of angularity are elements of letter form and style, and fluency is a quality of line (speed and rhythm). Each is assessed in its own right, but none of them measures complexity.

Answer: B

The practice that reduces deliberate alteration is to dictate long passages.

A writer can disguise a few words, but over a long dictated text the effort of disguise is hard to keep up while also attending to content and spelling, so natural habits return. Dictation also hides which words are of interest.

Standing up while writing would itself distort the writing, and showing the questioned document lets the subject see what to avoid or imitate, which defeats the purpose. Lined paper constrains the baseline and alignment, which are features the examiner wants to see in their natural state.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true; 'international' in the Reason is a misprint for 'intentional'.

Non-request (collected) standards are writings made in the normal course of life, such as letters, cheques and forms. They are desirable alongside request standards because they show the writer's natural habits at the time.

The Reason gives the explanation: since they were written before any investigation, they are free of the intentional disguise that a suspect may introduce into request writings. So the options calling either statement false are wrong.

Answer: B

Writing on walls, locker doors or mirrors is graffiti.

Graffiti is writing or drawing made on surfaces other than paper, often with spray paint, markers or lipstick. Document examiners compare it with a suspect's writing, although the unusual surface, writing posture and size mean the comparison has to allow for distortion.

Cacography means bad spelling or poor handwriting. Hieroglyphics is the pictorial script of ancient Egypt, and 'acrograph' is not a term for writing on such surfaces.

Answer: A

A Miscope is a small hand held digital microscope.

The MiScope is a compact, pen-sized USB digital microscope that magnifies a subject and sends the image to a computer for viewing and recording. Its portability makes it useful for examining documents, fibres, tool marks and other evidence at the scene or on the bench without moving the item to a laboratory microscope.

It is not an infrared microscope or a spectroscopic instrument, which analyse the chemistry of a sample, and a microphotograph is an image, not an instrument.

Answer: C

The guideline unrelated to document examination is ASTM F 2503-13.

ASTM F2503 is the standard practice for marking medical devices and other items for safety in the magnetic resonance (MRI) environment. It belongs to the F-series of standards on medical and surgical materials, not to forensic science.

The other designations belong to the E-series standards of ASTM Committee E30 on Forensic Sciences that dealt with questioned documents, such as E1422 (the guide for test methods for forensic writing ink comparison) and E2290 (the guide for examination of handwritten items).

Answer: C

An ISO/IEC 7811 magnetic stripe card has three tracks.

The standard defines the physical characteristics and the recording of the magnetic stripe on identification cards such as bank cards. The stripe carries up to three tracks: Track 1 holds up to 79 alphanumeric characters, including the cardholder's name, Track 2 holds 40 numeric characters, including the account number and expiry date, and Track 3 holds up to 107 numeric characters.

Card skimming typically copies Tracks 1 and 2, which is why examiners of counterfeit cards read all three.

Answer: C

The missing feature is the indentation on the back side of the paper.

A genuine signature written with a pen leaves an embossing on the reverse of the paper because of the writing pressure. A signature that has been scanned and printed on a colour printer is laid on the surface as ink or toner with no pressure, so this indentation is absent.

A colour-printed signature instead shows features of the printing process: dots of cyan, magenta and yellow around the strokes, and a uniform microscopic texture of the strokes. The pattern of the original paper may also be reproduced, so the other options describe features that can be present rather than missing.

Answer: C

Inkjet and laser printers are non-impact printers.

Impact printers, such as dot-matrix, daisy-wheel and typewriters, form characters by striking an inked ribbon against the paper, and leave indentations that document examiners can use. Inkjet printers spray droplets of ink and laser printers fuse toner with heat, so neither touches the paper with a striking element.

'Line printer' and 'page printer' describe how much a printer outputs at a time; a laser printer is a page printer, but an inkjet is not, so only 'non-impact' covers both.