PHILLIP WOOD IPHONE HOAX EXPOSED! IS THE PLANE AT AREA 51?
- April 6, 2014
- 0
Is the plane at Area 51? Of course not…but I can make the EXIF think so!
In a recent article I pointed to the accumulating evidence that the MH-370 disappearance, or at least the perpetuation of disappearance in the news cycle, was part of a larger plan to distract the public. As part of that article I discussed a recent article which both Steve Quayle and the Intelhub are hyping pretty strongly (hmmm.. ad revenue) regarding the supposedly leaking of an iPhone photo from a captive passenger named Phillip Wood. The image contained meta data stored in EXIF format which is the critical component of the articles evidence that the plane is in Diego Garcia (a military transport/bomber base) and Wood is indeed alive.
Normally I would have just stuck with my statement in the article regarding why this is a HOAX, but I recently came across an article about Sara Bajc, Phillip Wood’s partner, who is now claiming “someone” saw fighter aircraft escorting the plane and appears to be grasping onto these theories. Based on that article, again on the IntelHub, I really felt I needed to expose this.
As a conspiracy researcher, I put a lot of time into connecting dots. Sometimes those connections are tenuous, but they are legitimate. It really troubles me when obviously hoaxed stories are now being distributed as fact and many times to standup to those “crank” theories you are called a “shill” or “tool of the Illuminati.” That is a bad precedent, but what is worse is grieving families desperate for their loved one to be alive hanging onto these stories, when they are obviously fake. It also troubles me that poorly researched stories like this filter into the mass public and make all of us who do good work, or at least better work, look like “nuts.” I don’t appreciate that. I may make some grammar mistakes for the sake of an easier read, but I check my facts and this whole process took me a whole 30 to 45 minutes of my time to figure out.
So with that in place I will now debunk the “Phillip Wood, Diego Garcia, I have an iPhone in my Butt” story.
As I understand it the Phillip Wood story rests firmly on two facts. The first fact is that Wood could smuggle the phone off the plane in his anus and connect it to send the photo. The second fact is that the EXIF data in the picture is accurate and as both the Intelhub and Steve Quayle claim – it cannot be edited.
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Section One – The Physical iPhone
So in looking at the Phillip Wood story it is completely possible that Wood did hide the iPhone in his anus. It would not have been comfortable, and most likely would not have stayed in there but it could be done for a period of time. There are, however, several major problems with this account.
- If we assume Wood, and the other passengers, are in some sort of CIA detention facility (Diego Garcia has been used for “rendition flights”) , I think we could safely assume a couple of things. The first being is that Wood would be hooded and his hands bound not to mention in a stress position. That would make getting the cell phone operable very difficult. It would be possible but hard but if he did get the iPhone operable, the cell would be monitored by CIA operatives and most likely shielded to prevent such activities. We like to say a lot of things about the CIA but they are actually pretty good at what they do so I would find it unlikely that they would put Wood in a position where he could simply dial up a cell phone and send an message.
- This is the bigger problem. For this whole operation to work Wood would need a cell phone which can connect to a cell network and send messages (or Wifi – but open wifi or even wifi in a CIA detention facility? That’s pretty ridiculous.). So there in lies the rub. I contacted Sure.io (formerly Cable & Wireless Diego Garcia) and they assured me that if you want you phone to work (and its an unlocked quad band phone) you need to get a Sure.io sim card. No sim card no connection and that is case closed – the end of this conspiracy. A 15 minutes email to sure.io debunked this, 15 minutes of research and thats all. But for the sake of discussion I will also debunk the image as well.
Conclusion
So as we can see this “theory ” is not only improbable but also pretty much impossible.
Section Two – The Photo and GPS
The second part of this theory revolves around the claim that Wood snuck a photo with is now “extracted” iPhone and was able to snap a photo. He did this knowing that the GPS data of the photo location would be stored in the photo in EXIF format. Which as it would happen is totally true, in fact it is that data which was faked which serves not only as the core of this “theory” but also its undoing.
If you look at the EXIF data from the original (reproduced here on a website decoder) you see a latitude and longitude which correspond to Diego Garcia, home of the supposed CIA facility wood is being held at. So from the article we are told that this data is not editable. This is NOT TRUE and I will demonstrate just how false this is.
ORIGINAL GPS DATA
| GPS Altitude Ref | Sea level | GPS Latitude | 7″18’58.308907 | GPS Latitude Ref | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPS Longitude | 72″25’35.559082 | GPS Longitude Ref | E | GPS Version ID | 2 2 0 0 |
EDITING THE EXIF
The first thing we need to do is locate a good EXIF Editor. I chose EXIF Editor which for $9.99 on the app store was a steal. There are also instructions here for doing it with Picassa which is free and apparently the way it was done for this hoax.
Get the original – http://intellihub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/1395192158752.jpg
Open EXIF Editor
Check the “Original” GPS data
Find New GPS Coordinates (Lets use Area 51!)
Ok we have the GPS coordinates
Lets EDIT the EXIF GPS data! Wait you can’t do that??? Oh yes you can and we have the technology (for $9.99 on the App Store!). In fact EXIF Editor even has a easy to use map!
Click process and bammo (that’s a real word) edited EXIF (see below). If you have requests please let me know and I can edit one up for you..
Conclusion
You can try it yourself! If you need to save $9.99 or don’t have a Apple try the instructions at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-mh370-passenger-philip-wood-sends-photo-text-from-diego-garcia-fake-exif-gps-data.3397/ so you can do it in Picassa for free! This took another 15 minutes worth of time. So in under 30 minutes this entire story has been shown to be a HOAX or at least disinformation. If you are interested in why I think this is happening please refer to my other article <HERE>.
Thank you for your time!
FILES
“Original” – http://www.anomalies.net/wp-
“Original” – http://www.findexif.com?l=
Area 51 Version – http://www.anomalies.net/wp-
Area 51 Version – http://www.findexif.com/?l=
