Who is Mrs. Binoculars?

But first, let’s take stock of where we are in the discussion.

It Never, Ever Ends
Is it possible? Is it really possible that Jennifer and team would be so unbelievably sloppy in their deception, that they could make the same fundamental mistakes within less than 24 hours of being caught in the first scam? The answer is yes.

Throughout the day of December 20, the Ministry Watchman team were declaring victory. They had “refuted” the argument that Mrs. Binoculars is Jennifer Epstein by simply declaring that she was not, and by posting a web site address from whence came the “legally” obtained picture.

In their article, “Who’s Behind The Binoculars?,” they posted a subtitle that compared the documented research of my investigation to “Conspiracy Theories” and “Cheap Parlor Tricks.” They boldly declared:

A final conclusion to draw is that…observers can expect that future speculations, allegations, and conspiracy theories against Ministry Watchman, the Epsteins...

But within less then twenty-four hours, the real parlor tricks and conspiracies were to be revealed to the shock of all well-thinking readers.

Why Did They “Come Clean”?
I tipped them off.

Late Wednesday night, I fired a warning shot over the bow. I posted a clue that very soon there would be an article on Mrsbinoculars.com called “Mrs. Binoculars vs. Danny Boy.” I specifically placed a subtitle that included the word “fraud.”

All of a sudden the boasting and gloating stopped. The jig was up.

Commentary on Ministry Watchman revealed the first clue that they were about to sing.

Early in the day, strange posts began to appear on the Ministry Watchman comment area. The anonymous assassin who goes by “Watchman” posted a comment hedging on his position on the image. Maybe Danny is really Danielle, not a boy, but a girl? And, after all, “Watchman” opined, what difference would it make if the picture actually was Jennifer Epstein?

I suspect the Ministry team was up well through the night in knots, waiting, clicking back and forth to this site—in expectation of the coming of my latest work of investigative reporting. Meanwhile, the disinformation committee at Ministry Watchman had to kick things into high-gear.

The question: How to stop Chancey from spilling the beans and revealing our fraud?

Answer: Back-up plan. Cook up a fresh story.

Apparently, the Watchman's fervent assertion that “Mrs. Binoculars” was not Jennifer Epstein at all but was an old photo pulled (with permission, of course) from an online photo album turned out to be, well, a lie. But the Watchman is not to blame—it was his web guy who was at fault. Turns out, the poor guy had concocted an elaborate ruse involving a fake online travel album, stolen photos, and backdated timestamps—all to avoid being caught lying to the Watchman about securing permission from the (unnamed) real owners for the use of the copyrighted Mrs. Binoculars photo.

Of course, this back-up plan needed more than a bald-faced assertion. It needed another web site to cover the lie of the first lie.

But there was a problem: The Ministry Watchman team had to beat the clock. They wanted to get their post up first, so they could say: “We did this on our own.” So, they actually went live just a few minutes before I did, but before they had completed their new sham Flickr site. This Flickr site would not be presented to the public for three hours—and then only through their comment section below their big-apology letter.

Recall My Argument From the Last Article
Here is my theory:

Ministry Watchman is lying about the origin of the picture of “Danny” boy.
Ministry Watchman cooked up the Picasa web gallery this very week and faked a July 29 posting date for the web album.
Ministry Watchman placed the image of binocular-dude on Monday, December 18, two days after my own article launched and months after the Mrs. Binoculars image was placed as the Ministry Watchman banner.
Ministry Watchman tried to cover their tracks, but blew it.
Jennifer Epstein is “Mrs. Binoculars”

Points one through four were proven by me and conceded by Ministry Watchman yesterday. It is my position that, through their actions, they have also proven point number five.

Assessing the Mrs. Binoculars Argument
I've made the case that the Ministry Watchman folks are liars and cowards and—in admitting the behavior of their “webmaster”—they proved my point. And, to use the logic in many of the comments on that site, if the staff of Watchman lied to us about the source of the picture, why should we believe anything their sources say?

Let's take stock of where we are in the discussion:

Matt Chancey:

There is a tremendous amount of evidence that demonstrates Jennifer Epstein’s complicity in the Ministry Watchman fraud. If Mrs. Binoculars is actually Jennifer Epstein, then the case is closed. If so, Ministry Watchman is fraudulently claiming to be an independent site exposing religious tyranny, when in truth it is nothing more than a vehicle for prosecuting the private grudges of its key players.
From a carefully aligned comparison of the Mrs. Binoculars photo with two publicly available photos of Mrs. Epstein, photos shared with all readers, it seems the two are the same.
Ministry Watchman was proven to lie about the source of the photo. They cooked-up a website and scammed the public.

Ministry Watchman:

Matt is a toadie and sycophant who doesn't know what he's talking about.
The photo came from a web album posted months prior to the founding of Ministry Watchman.
Enemies of Ministry Watchman like Matt will come up with all types of “conspiracy stories” and “parlor tricks.” “Observers can expect... future speculations, allegations, and conspiracy theories against Ministry Watchman, the Epsteins...”
O.K., so point #2 was a lie.

Whose arguments carry the day? By not being able to point to source of the photo, Ministry Watchman can't make a persuasive case against mine.

In fact, not producing the original source photo is, in itself, evidence that I'm right. The original photo, in its entirety, would have settled the question once and for all. The fact that Ministry Watchman would not produce the original photo can only reasonably mean that the photo would not be helpful to their cause. All they had to do was produce the uncropped, unaltered original, and show us the face of the actual subject—a face that is not Jennifer Epstein's. They could have proven me to be wrong. Case closed. The fact that Ministry Watchman won't produce this information can only reasonably mean that the original photo would not be helpful to their cause.

They knew this. They knew we would ask for it. So they had to fake a website and claim to have downloaded the image “with permission” from “some guy” they did not know personally so the original could not be traced.

What they did not know was that they would get caught.

Ministry Watchman Panics AGAIN
About three hours after “A Public Apology” is posted,“Watchman” added a comment: the real source of the photo has been found! Watchman posted a link to a Flickr photo album where the original photo can be found.

Clicking through brings you to the photos of the heretofore unheard of “ynotpic.” And rather than vacation shots of Irish castles, coastlines, and countryside, we see: skate punk, skate punk, in vitro skate punk, young skate punks, Mrs. Binoculars, skate punk, skates, and skate punk.

There are dozens of serious credibility problems with this website for the Ministry Watchmen assassins. Many are exactly the same issues I raised with the first site—a site the Ministry Watchman has now admitted was a complete fraud, supposedly created by a now-fired anonymous webmaster guilty of using an image without permission.¹ There are continuity issues, technical problems, and numerous “reveals” that make it clear that this site and the uploading of Mrs. Binoculars is a two-bit scam.

Seriously, friends, I hate to have to put you through this again, so let me just mention a few points which demonstrate that you have been given another hoax.

The Google Search Engine Catastrophe REPEATED
Here again is the question: Just how valid is the claim that the Ministry Watchman web design team searched for the binocular images and stumbled across this second gallery? Here again is the answer: highly improbable.

Numerous Google searches for pages which would contain identifying information for this image have revealed nothing. Nothing! The image is simply unsearchable.

But there is more.

Let me point out something: Most of the pictures in “ynotpic’s” album appear to have been posted in the summer. The idea, I suppose, is that this was well before Ministry Watchman’s founding.

On the surface, the Mrs. Binoculars photo appears to have been up on this site all this time. Since July 11, in fact. More than five months.

Do me a favor, would you? And do it soon, because in a day or two you'll get a different result. Let's try to find the ynotpic binocular photo in Google.

Go to Google and type in “flickr binoculars Derbyshire” (without the quotes). Or, if you’d like, pick any combination of words that might narrow your search to Mrs. Binoculars. Now click the “Images” link up top to narrow your results to just images. Google has no result for Mrs. Binoculars.

Now, go back to Google and do an image search for “flickr binoculars dosmosis” (again, no quotes). Now you’ll get three images. Click on the binocular image simply called “binoculars,” probably to the far right. Find and click on it in the gallery. When was this picture posted to Flickr? July 9, 2006, right?

Now, get this: this binocular picture was posted two days before the alleged July 11 posting of “Mrs. Binoculars!”

So, how is it possible that Google’s industry-leading search engine can find the one picture but not the other? Didn't Google essentially have the same amount of time to find both?

“But there’s just a two-day difference, Matt. Google will pick up ‘Mrs. Binoculars’ tomorrow.” Okay. Fair enough. Do a Google image search on: “flickr liar” (again, no quotes). Click on the long-nosed man. What's the date? Right: November 13. Just over one month ago. You see, it doesn't take Google long to find pictures—once they are posted!

Try it yourself. Find month-old Flickr pictures and see if Google doesn’t list them.

So, why is Google finding these other pictures, but not Mrs. Binoculars? Do you think it’s perhaps because Mrs. Binoculars wasn't up six months ago? Remember, it takes several days for Google to index new files. So, if Google can’t find it, it’s because it’s new. Brand new.

Then ask yourself: Would Google be the market-leader in “search” if it couldn’t find stuff like this in less than a month? How about five months?

So, if you want to try this yourself, hurry! Google is good. They will pick up Mrs. Binoculars soon. And when they do, it will prove my point: a picture truly posted on Flickr wouldn’t still be unknown to Google some five months later. No way.

How Ministry Watchman Backdated the Mrs. Binoculars Image — AGAIN!
Are you experiencing deja vu? In my last article I detail how easy it is to backdate an image. The same principles I explained there in the context of Picasa also apply to here to Flickr.

So now, how did that “Posted on July 11, 2006” language get on the Mrs. Binoculars photo?

One more link, I promise: Visit this site. It’s a Flickr site that some friends of mine loaned me. I have posted some familiar news site headlines from December 20, 2006. (If you’ve been following this whole mess, you’ve probably seen these before.) Notice the date they were posted: November 29, 2006. That’s a month before the news they report even happened.

It’s that easy to back-date photos on Flickr.

Someone at Ministry Watchman should read my articles. I explained to them in great detail how we caught them in their latest fraud. I guess the old saying is still true: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Conclusion
The Ministry Watchman’s stories look increasingly like the stammerings of a six-year-old caught red-handed in the cookie jar. The only thing more incredible than the bitter vengeance perpetrated on innocent men and women by this group of web assassins is their propensity to lie and scam and deceive without blushing.

The best they can come up with is that the anonymous webmaster of their anonymous website violated the copyright of an anonymous photographer; so, the anonymous head honcho of the anonymous website fires the anonymous webmaster and apologizes to the anonymous owner of the real photograph of the anonymous Mrs. Binoculars and said he/she/it would take full responsibility.

Are you as tired of this nonsense as I am?

Ministry Watchman has been caught in a lie about the origins of the Mrs. Binoculars photos twice. The evidence conclusively demonstrates once again that Ministry Watchman has cooked up another fraud—a lie to cover the last lie, which was meant to cover the lie before that... and so on.

There is no getting around it now—the issue of this photo goes to the very heart of their already devastated credibility. At this point, there is simply nothing that can be done to rescue their claims concerning Mrs. Binoculars. As far as John Q. Public is concerned: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times—I don’t think so.

Even if Ministry Watchman were to come clean and confess that they lied again, they can never again resurrect a shred of credibility on this (or any other issue). Even if they were to concoct another big one—perhaps, if they were to tell us that their new anonymous webmaster (the one they hired within three hours of firing the last anonymous webmaster) was also the lying cheat behind the new scam, no one would care.

Even if they were to actually post the unaltered, un-retouched, full-sized, uncompressed original picture, including a full-faced image of the subject—and provide all necessary information for confirmation of its origin—no reasonable person would believe them. The first question will always be: What’s the cover-up now? These unaccountable hucksters have lied too many times.

Oh, and by the way, in case you're interested, I still think Jennifer Epstein is Mrs. Binoculars.

I leave you again with the cogent and forceful biblical admonitions included in the Boerne Christian Assembly comment on the godly response to habitual liars:

How Should the Church Respond to the Couple: In order to preserve the flock of God from damage caused by railers, extortioners, disorderly, disobedient, unruly, unrepentant and dishonest individuals, as well as to encourage such individuals to flee to Christ while there is yet time, the Bible offers the following directives:

Romans 16:17-18: Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
I Corinthians 5:11-13: But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person
II Thessalonians 3:6-7: Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you;
II Thessalonians 3:14: And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.
Psalms 101:5: Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.
Proverbs 22:10: Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.

¹ When was the last time you heard of anybody constructing a time-intensive, incredibly elaborate cover-up scheme of this nature, all because they forgot to ask for permission for an image from an anonymous and painfully non-professional site? Besides, didn't Watchman notice the many non-original images uploaded to that album? For example, the image of Garry Moore (spelled wrong on Flickr) is obviously scanned out of a magazine, and still has the photographer's credit in the corner. ynotpic is clearly not the owner of that or several of the other pictures, so why should we assume that the banner of Mrs. Binoculars belongs to him?