Bredemarket

Possible FinCEN Changes

H/T ComplyAdvantage. From FinCEN.

“[On June 18] the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) held the 62nd semi-annual plenary meeting of the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG). Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Michael Faulkender delivered remarks at the event laying out guiding principles for BSA modernization.”

https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-holds-62nd-bank-secrecy-act-advisory-group-bsaag-plenary

ComplyAdvantage itself states:

“The most eye-catching update is that the Treasury will attempt to “change the AML/CFT [Anti Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism] status quo” so the BSA “explicitly permits financial institutions to de-prioritize risks” and direct resources towards higher-risk areas. The Treasury also intends to streamline reporting processes to minimize the SAR [Suspicious Activity Report] and CTR [Currency Transaction Report] burden on organizations.”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-plans-bsa-modernization-singapore-implements-corporate-iuzxe

How to Find LinkedIn’s “Most Recent” Feed

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was reading my LinkedIn feed. (Yes, I know; the first step is admitting you have a problem.)

Except that I was seeing stuff that was weeks old. Posts about “upcoming” trade shows that already took place. News about the “upcoming” Prism Project deepfake report that was released long ago.

I don’t know why LinkedIn’s algorithm thinks I need to read ancient history. What’s next…reports that Enron may be a fraud?

The chronological feed

So I decided to bypass the algorithm and access the tried and true chronological feed. You know, the way things used to work before we supposedly got “smart.”

(As an aside, I remember when FriendFeed would AUTOMATICALLY update the chronological feed when new content was posted. The way that the pitchforks were raised, you would have thought the world ended. As it turned out, the world wouldn’t end until August 10, 2009…or April 10, 2015. But I digress.)

Anyway, I went to the feed to look for the switch to swap to chronological…but could find no such switch.

So I checked Google Gemini, and discovered that the “Most Recent” feed switch was buried in the Settings. For mobile LinkedIn users, it was in the “Account preferences” section, in the “Feed preferences.”

Except that it wasn’t.

Whack a Mole

“Feed preferences” only governed display or non-display of political content. The option below “Feed preferences,” “Preferred feed view,” was the one I wanted.

Color me conspiratorial, but I think everyone in the Really Big Bunch—Microsoft (LinkedIn), Meta (Facebook), and the others—likes to play “Whack a Mole” with the location of the chronological feed setting so that we give up and stick with the algorithmic feed of The Things We Are Supposed To See.

So the instructions here, written on June 22, 2025, may be invalid on June 22, 2026. Or July 22, 2025. Or June 23, 2025.

But for this moment I have the chronological feed set on LinkedIn, and since it takes effort to change it back, I don’t know when I will.

Update

When I returned to LinkedIn to share a LinkedIn version of this post, my preferred feed view had been reset to “most relevant.”

Yet Another Video Reel-ease on Monday

[UPDATE: The video is reel-eased.]

I created a new reel for my identity/biometric prospects, but haven’t released it yet.

I’ll release it on Monday, June 23, at 8 am (Pacific Daylight Time).

Where?

Here on the Bredemarket blog.
The Bredemarket Instagram account.
The Bredemarket Facebook page.
Other places (after 8 am).

I even scheduled a Facebook event. Because Meta wants me to turn every Facebook post into an event, I set one up for Monday at 8 am (Pacific Daylight Time).

Nothing special at the event; I’m not even planning to go live. Just a time to check to see if the video is posted, and to spend 32 seconds watching it.

Enjoy.

TikTok Uncertainty…Again Again

I wrote this post in April.

And now the TikTok sale deadline was extended again.

Should I just set this to auto-repost every 90 days?

And yes, Luna—I mean Celina—has talked about the possible latest extension. And will probably discuss it again 90 days from now.

(She’s Tidied Up and) I Can’t Find Anything

A wombat holding a phone displaying a digital identity, surrounded by papers with pictures of cars. Two Dolby speakers are in the back of the room.

Are you having trouble finding an asset such as a digital identity or a commercial asset? If you are, there are ways to make things easier to find.

An example from the identity world

Identity Jedi David Lee recently shared his thoughts on “The Hidden Cost of Bad Identity Data (and How to Fix It).” Lee didn’t focus on the biometric data, but instead on the textual data that is associated with a digital identity.

“Let’s say you’re kicking off a new identity program. You know you need user location to drive access policies, governance rules, or onboarding flows. But your authoritative source has location data in five different formats—some say “NY,” others say “New York,” and some list office addresses with zip codes and floor numbers.

“You tell yourself: “We’ll clean it up later.”

“What you’ve really done is commit your future self to a much more expensive project.”

Garbage in, garbage out.

An example from the commerce world

Krassimir Boyanov of KBWEB Consult provides another example of a problem in his post “Why AEM Assets Smart Tagging Makes Your Marketing Work Easier.” Let’s say that you’re managing the images (the “assets”) that display on a company’s online website. You have thousands if not millions of images to manage. How do you find a particular image?

One way to do this is to “tag” each image with descriptive information.

But if you do it wrong, there will be problems.

“Tagging is inconsistent. If 10 people are tagging the items, the tags will probably be inconsistent. While one person tags an item as a “car,” another may tag a similar item as an “automobile.” Although the two assets are similar, this is hidden because of inconsistent tag use.”

Again, garbage in, garbage out.

An organizational solution from the identity world

Lee and Boyanov approach these similar problems from two perspectives.

Lee, as an Identity and Access Management (IAM) expert, approaches this as a business problem and offers the following recommendations (among others):

“Clean early, not late: Push for authoritative sources to normalize and codify the data before it hits the IAM system….

“Push accountability upstream: Don’t accept ownership of fixing problems you don’t control. Instead, elevate the data issue to the right stakeholder (hint: HR, IT, or Legal).”

While Lee can certainly speak to the technologies that can normalize and codify the data, he prefers in this post to concentrate on the organizational issues that cause dirty data, and on how to prevent these issues from reoccurring in the future.

A technological solution from the commerce world

Boyanov can also speak to business and organizational issues as an Adobe Experience Manager consultant who has helped multiple organizations implement the Adobe product. But in this case he concentrates on a technological approach offered by Adobe:

A Taxonomy is a system of organizing tags based on shared characteristics, which are usually hierarchical structured per organizational need. The structure can help finding a tag faster or impose a generalization.
Example: There is a need to subcategorize stock imagery of cars. The taxonomy could look like:

/subject/car/
/subject/car/sportscar
/subject/car/sportscar/porsche
/subject/car/sportscar/ferrari
…
/subject/car/minivan
/subject/car/minivan/mercedes
/subject/car/minivan/volkswagen
…
/subject/car/limousine
…

Once the taxonomy is defined, assets can be tagged (preferably automatically) in accordance with the hierarchy.

Presumably David Lee’s identity world can similarly come up with a method to standardize addresses BEFORE they are added to an IAM system.

As deep as any ocean

Whether you’re dealing with a digital identity or a commercial asset, you need to ensure that you can find this asset in the future. This requires planning beforehand.

And a content creation project also requires planning beforehand, such as asking questions before beginning the project.

If you are an identity/biometric or technology firm that requires content creation, or perhaps proposal or analysis services, Bredemarket can help. After all, content creation is science…and art.

Talk to me: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

CPA

Deep Deepfakes vs. Shallow Shallowfakes

We toss words around until they lose all meaning, like the name of Jello Biafra’s most famous band. (IYKYK.)

So why are deepfakes deep?

And does the existence of deepfakes necessarily mean that shallowfakes exist?

Why are deepfakes deep?

The University of Virginia Information Security explains how deepfakes are created, which also explains why they’re called that.

“A deepfake is an artificial image or video (a series of images) generated by a special kind of machine learning called “deep” learning (hence the name).”

UVA then launches into a technical explanation.

“Deep learning is a special kind of machine learning that involves “hidden layers.” Typically, deep learning is executed by a special class of algorithm called a neural network….A hidden layer is a series of nodes within the network that performs mathematical transformations to convert input signals to output signals (in the case of deepfakes, to convert real images to really good fake images). The more hidden layers a neural network has, the “deeper” the network is.”

Why are shallowfakes shallow?

So if you don’t use a multi-level neural network to create your fake, then it is by definition shallow. Although you most likely need to use cumbersome manual methods to create it.

In injection attack detection, no fakery of the image is necessary. You can insert a real image of the person.

For presentation attack detection (liveness detection, either active or passive), you can dispense with the neural network and just use old fashioned makeup.

Or a mask.

It’s all semantics

In truth, we commonly refer to all face, voice, and finger fakes as “deep” fakes even when they don’t originate in a neural network.

But if someone wants to refer to shallowfakes, it’s OK with me.

KYG, Know Your Government (ICE, CBP, SBCSD, USPS)

Two unrecognizable people driving a white van on a street lined with palm trees.

I recently cited my 30 years of experience in selling to governments by using the acronym B2G (business to government). This confused the person I was talking to, who had heard of B2B (business to business) but not B2G.

By the same token, you have KYB (know your business) and KYG (know your government).

Two recent incidents in Southern California indicate that some of us are pretty bad at KYG.

El Pendón Estrellado

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the news, a lot of people in Southern California and elsewhere are talking about a portion of the Department of Homeland Security called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Not to be confused with the Queen – David Bowie fan.

I won’t get into the details about why people are paying attention to ICE right now, but let’s just say that when ICE shows up, a crowd gathers.

And that’s what happened at Dodger Stadium this morning when some white vans showed up at the Dodger Stadium parking lot. The Dodgers stated that ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and that the Dodgers denied them access.

Except that it apparently wasn’t ICE, but Customs and Border Protection, another part of the Department of Homeland Security.

“‘This had nothing to do with the Dodgers. CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement,’ Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.”

The Dodgers may be sensitive about things at the moment, since they apparently attempted to persuade Nezza NOT to sing the National Anthem in Spanish recently.

San Ber’dino

But it isn’t just people in Chavez Ravine that assume that white van equals ICE. Take my county, San Bernardino County. Or as former county resident Frank Zappa put it, San Ber’dino.

Recently the Sheriff’s Department made a statement.

[The] department is sending a message to the community following two incidents involving white department vehicles that it says were “targeted” after being mistaken for Immigration and Customs Enforcement units.

“All white vehicles are NOT ICE,” read Thursday’s post on the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s X account….

“We have had two incidents of our sheriff’s department personnel targeted while driving our unmarked units and in one case they were run off the road,” the post reads.

With so many agencies providing law enforcement and homeland security services, it’s understandable that some people could get confused about exactly which agency is at their door. ICE? CBP? The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department (SBCSD)?

Don’t forget that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) also uses white vans (although they’re marked).

So if you’re not careful, the white van that you block may not be trying to send people to El Salvador, but instead may be trying to deliver your Amazon shipment.

HP Instant Ink Users and Identity: 1:1 Person-to-NPE Binding Isn’t Always Enough

How many people should use a SaaS service? If your answer is “only one,” you don’t need to read this post.

Last month I discussed a particular use case in which AI-based non-person entities (NPEs) were bound to the identities of carbon-based life forms. My post “Identity-Bound Non-Person Entities” reviewed the partnership between Anonybit and SmartUp.

This binding doesn’t need artificial intelligence to work. The NPE may be something as simple as a service.

But how many people can be bound to an NPE?

A company and its service

There is a very large technology company; I won’t reveal the company name, but its initials are HP. And this very large company provides a service; I won’t reveal the service name, but it instantly provides ink for the company’s printers…

Never mind. It turns out that I already discussed HP Instant Ink (Ink as a Service) in the Bredemarket blog before. Plus, the company providing IaaS is no longer known as “the Hewlett-Packard Company,” but as “HP Inc.” So much for my attempts at obfuscation.

The 1:1 binding between me and Instant Ink

Anyway, we did sign up for Instant Ink when we purchased a new printer. Specifically, my HP account was registered as the owner of our Instant Ink account.

(Those of you with a keen eye can already see where this is going.)

As part of the Instant Ink service that we purchased, I can obtain two things:

1. The status of Instant Ink shipments to us

Not that these shipments are all that fast.

So far we have encountered two instances in which we ran out of ink before the new Instant Ink shipment arrived.

And when you put a regular ink cartridge into the printer while waiting for the Instant Ink shipment, HP sends a nasty gram stating that I put the wrong ink in the printer, and to put Instant Ink in the printer right now.

Um, my Instant Ink is in Pennsylvania, and it will take 10 days to reach California. What am I supposed to do, fly to Pennsylvania and get it?

2. HP support

For our printer, I can obtain support from HP. I will have more to say about HP support later.

First person…or people

Do all of you see the issue now? If not, let me spell it out.

I am married, and my wife and I bought the printer together. But she has no access to shipment tracking or support; only I do.

Actually, I must confess that I gave her my HP login and password. So she has access to the shipment tracking information. But since her name is not John, we assumed that HP would never talk to her about the Instant Ink service that we purchased.

There is something in the (so-called) HP Smart App that allows me to “invite” someone to the printer. But when I tried to “invite” my wife, HP briefly flashed a message saying that I could not invite my wife because she already had an HP personal account.

I need support

By this time I had piled up 3 support requests for HP:

How can I get new Instant Ink before my old Instant Ink runs out?
How can my wife see information on our Instant Ink service?
Plus there’s a third one regarding multiple HP accounts that I won’t get into here.

I decided to tackle the second support request first. So I found the support page, started a gust, and got a ticket number.

The first support chat

I was routed to a printer specialist, who informed me that they couldn’t help me and routed me to an Instant Ink specialist.

The Instant Ink person asked for the error code that appeared when I tried to “invite” my wife. I explained that I didn’t know because it disappeared so quickly.

So I tried to invite my wife again, pointing my smartphone camera at the laptop screen so that I could take a picture of the error code the…um…instant that it appeared.

I successfully took the picture, and there was no error code. Just a message saying that I couldn’t invite my wife because she already had an HP personal account. And to contact support.

The Instant Ink specialist instructed me to click on a link, then closed the support ticket.

I clicked on the link…and was asked to create a new support ticket.

The second support chat

I was routed to a printer specialist, who informed me that they couldn’t help me and routed me to an Instant Ink specialist.

(Yes, there’s a lot of repetition in this post.)

By this time I tried to boil my request down to a simple question: how can my wife see Instant Ink shipment status and request support on her own?

The Instant Ink specialist went quiet for a while, and finally—over an hour after I started the initial support chat—provided the solution to my problem.

Give my wife my HP login and password. And sure, she’ll have no problem contacting support, even though I’m the named user.

Suffice it to say that I was not pleased.

A systemic problem

But to be fair, none of the 4 support people I talked to could have solved my problem.

Because HP has made the underlying assumption that its Instant Ink service can only be managed by one person, not two.

And HP is not alone in this. There are multiple services that assume single person management. This affects married couples often, where one spouse is the named user for a service but knows nothing about it because spouse 2 handles it.

This results in a number of conversations like this:

SERVICE: John?

WIFE: No, this is his wife.

SERVICE: I need John’s authorization to continue.

WIFE: (carries phone to me in the Bredemarket world headquarters) Amazing and wonderful husband, could you authorize me to discuss our account?

(Some portions of this conversation may have been fictionalized.)

ME: Hello, this is John.

SERVICE: John, what is your date of birth?

This is not a technology issue, but an organizational issue. Except where laws (such as HIPAA) regulate this, an organization should allow multiple people to be assigned to a service or other NPE.

It would make my—I mean our lives easier.