Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Big 3, or 4, or 5? Through the Years

On September 30, FindBiometrics and Acuity Market Intelligence released the production version of the Biometric Digital Identity Prism Report. You can request to download it here.

From https://findbiometrics.com/prism/ as of 9/30/2023.

Central to the concept of the Biometric Digital Identity Prism is the idea of the “Big 3 ID,” which the authors define as follows:

These firms have a global presence, a proven track record, and moderate-to-advanced activity in every other prism beam.

From “The Biometric Digital Identity Prism Report, September 2023.”

The Big 3 are IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales.

Whoops, wrong Big Three, although the Soviet Union/Russia and the United Kingdom have also been heavily involved in fingerprint identification. By U.S. Signal Corps photo. – http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a33351 http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail381.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=538831

But FindBiometrics and Acuity Market Intelligence didn’t invent the Big 3. The concept has been around for 40 years. And two of today’s Big 3 weren’t in the Big 3 when things started. Oh, and there weren’t always 3; sometimes there were 4, and some could argue that there were 5.

So how did we get from the Big 3 of 40 years ago to the Big 3 of today?

The Big 3 in the 1980s

Back in 1986 (eight years before I learned how to spell AFIS) the American National Standards Institute, in conjunction with the National Bureau of Standards, issued ANSI/NBS-ICST 1-1986, a data format for information interchange of fingerprints. The PDF of this long-superseded standard is available here.

Cover page of ANSI/NBS-ICST 1-1986. PDF here.

When creating this standard, ANSI and the NBS worked with a number of law enforcement agencies, as well as companies in the nascent fingerprint industry. There is a whole list of companies cited at the beginning of the standard, but I’d like to name four of them.

  • De La Rue Printrak, Inc.
  • Identix, Inc.
  • Morpho Systems
  • NEC Information Systems, Inc.

While all four of these companies produced computerized fingerprinting equipment, three of them had successfully produced automated fingerprint identification systems, or AFIS. As Chapter 6 of the Fingerprint Sourcebook subsequently noted:

  • De La Rue Printrak (formerly part of Rockwell, which was formerly Autonetics) had deployed AFIS equipment for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and for the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as well as other cities. Dorothy Bullard (more about her later) has written about Printrak’s history, as has Reference for Business.
  • Morpho Systems resulted from French AFIS efforts, separate from those of the FBI. These efforts launched Morpho’s long-standing relationship with the French National Police, as well as a similar relationship (now former relationship) with Pierce County, Washington.
  • NEC had deployed AFIS equipment for the National Police Academy of Japan, and (after some prodding; read Chapter 6 for the story) the city of San Francisco. Eventually the state of California obtained an NEC system, which played a part in the identification of “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez.
Richard Ramirez mug shot, taken on 12 December 1984 after an arrest for car theft. By Los Angeles Police Department – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29431687

After the success of the San Francisco and California AFIS systems, many other jurisdictions began clamoring for AFIS of their own, and turned to these three vendors to supply them.

The Big 4 in the 1990s

But in 1990, these three firms were joined by a fourth upstart, Cogent Systems of South Pasadena, California.

While customers initially preferred the Big 3 to the upstart, Cogent Systems eventually installed a statewide system in Ohio and a border control system for the U.S. government, plus a vast number of local systems at the county and city level.

Between 1991 and 1994, the (Immigfation and Naturalization Service) conducted several studies of automated fingerprint systems, primarily in the San Diego, California, Border Patrol Sector. These studies demonstrated to the INS the feasibility of using a biometric fingerprint identification system to identify apprehended aliens on a large scale. In September 1994, Congress provided almost $30 million for the INS to deploy its fingerprint identification system. In October 1994, the INS began using the system, called IDENT, first in the San Diego Border Patrol Sector and then throughout the rest of the Southwest Border.

From https://oig.justice.gov/reports/plus/e0203/back.htm

I was a proposal writer for Printrak (divested by De La Rue) in the 1990s, and competed against Cogent, Morpho, and NEC in AFIS procurements. By the time I moved from proposals to product management, the next redefinition of the “big” vendors occurred.

The Big 3 in 2003

There are a lot of name changes that affected AFIS participants, one of which was the 1988 name change of the National Bureau of Standards to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As fingerprints and other biometric modalities were increasingly employed by government agencies, NIST began conducting tests of biometric systems. These tests continue to this day, as I have previously noted.

One of NIST’s first tests was the Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation of 2003 (FpVTE 2003).

From https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/image-group/fingerprint-vendor-technology-evaluation-fpvte-2003

For those who are familiar with NIST testing, it’s no surprise that the test was thorough:

FpVTE 2003 consists of multiple tests performed with combinations of fingers (e.g., single fingers, two index fingers, four to ten fingers) and different types and qualities of operational fingerprints (e.g., flat livescan images from visa applicants, multi-finger slap livescan images from present-day booking or background check systems, or rolled and flat inked fingerprints from legacy criminal databases).

From https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/image-group/fingerprint-vendor-technology-evaluation-fpvte-2003

Eighteen vendors submitted their fingerprint algorithms to NIST for one or more of the various tests, including Bioscrypt, Cogent Systems, Identix, SAGEM MORPHO (SAGEM had acquired Morpho Systems), NEC, and Motorola (which had acquired Printrak). And at the conclusion of the testing, the FpVTE 2003 summary (PDF) made this statement:

Of the systems tested, NEC, SAGEM, and Cogent produced the most accurate results.

Which would have been great news if I were a product manager at NEC, SAGEM, and Cogent.

Unfortunately, I was a product manager at Motorola.

The effect of this report was…not good, and at least partially (but not fully) contributed to Motorola’s loss of its long-standing client, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to Cogent.

The Big 3, 4, or 5 after 2003

So what happened in the years after FpVTE was released? Opinions vary, but here are three possible explanations for what happened next.

Did the Big 3 become the Big 4 again?

Now I probably have a bit of bias in this area since I was a Motorola employee, but I maintain that Motorola overcame this temporary setback and vaulted back into the Big 4 within a couple of years. Among other things, Motorola deployed a national 1000 pixels-per-inch (PPI) system in Sweden several years before the FBI did.

Did the Big 3 remain the Big 3?

Motorola’s arch-enemies at Sagem Morpho had a different opinion, which was revealed when the state of West Virginia finally got around to deploying its own AFIS. A bit ironic, since the national FBI AFIS system IAFIS was located in West Virginia, or perhaps not.

Anyway, Motorola had a very effective sales staff, as was apparent when the state issued its Request for Proposal (RFP) and explicitly said that the state wanted a Motorola AFIS.

That didn’t stop Cogent, Identix, NEC, and Sagem Morpho from bidding on the project.

After the award, Dorothy Bullard and I requested copies of all of the proposals for evaluation. While Motorola (to no one’s surprise) won the competition, Dorothy and I believed that we shouldn’t have won. In particular, our arch-enemies at Sagem Morpho raised a compelling argument that it should be the chosen vendor.

Their argument? Here’s my summary: “Your RFP says that you want a Motorola AFIS. The states of Kansas (see page 6 of this PDF) and New Mexico (see this PDF) USED to have a Motorola AFIS…but replaced their systems with our MetaMorpho AFIS because it’s BETTER than the Motorola AFIS.”

But were Cogent, Motorola, NEC, and Sagem Morpho the only “big” players?

Did the Big 3 become the Big 5?

While the Big 3/Big 4 took a lot of the headlines, there were a number of other companies vying for attention. (I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worthwhile to review it again.)

  • Identix, while making some efforts in the AFIS market, concentrated on creating live scan fingerprinting machines, where it competed (sometimes in court) against companies such as Digital Biometrics and Bioscrypt.
  • The fingerprint companies started to compete against facial recognition companies, including Viisage and Visionics.
  • Oh, and there were also iris companies such as Iridian.
  • And there were other ways to identify people. Even before 9/11 mandated REAL ID (which we may get any year now), Polaroid was making great efforts to improve driver’s licenses to serve as a reliable form of identification.

In short, there were a bunch of small identity companies all over the place.

But in the course of a few short years, Dr. Joseph Atick (initially) and Robert LaPenta (subsequently) concentrated on acquiring and merging those companies into a single firm, L-1 Identity Solutions.

From https://www.officer.com/investigations/forensics/company/10037062/l1-identity-solutions-inc

These multiple mergers resulted in former competitors Identix and Digital Biometrics, and former competitors Viisage and Visionics, becoming part of one big happy family. (A multinational big happy family when you count Bioscrypt.) Eventually this company offered fingerprint, face, iris, driver’s license, and passport solutions, something that none of the Big 3/Big 4 could claim (although Sagem Morpho had a facial recognition offering). And L-1 had federal contracts and state contracts that could match anything that the Big 3/Big 4 offered.

So while L-1 didn’t have a state AFIS contract like Cogent, Motorola, NEC, and Sagem Morpho did, you could argue that L-1 was important enough to be ranked with the big boys.

So for the sake of argument let’s assume that there was a Big 5, and L-1 Identity Solutions was part of it, along with the three big boys Motorola, NEC, and Safran (who had acquired Sagem and thus now owned Sagem Morpho), and the independent Cogent Systems. These five companies competed fiercly with each other (see West Virginia, above).

In a two-year period, everything would change.

The Big 3 after 2009

Hang on to your seats.

The Motorola RAZR was hugely popular…until it wasn’t. Eventually Motorola split into two companies and sold off others, including the “Printrak” Biometric Business Unit. By NextG50 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=130206087

If you’re keeping notes, the Big 5 have now become the Big 3: 3M, Safran, and NEC (the one constant in all of this).

While there were subsequent changes (3M sold Cogent and other pieces to Gemalto, Safran sold all of Morpho to Advent International/Oberthur to form IDEMIA, and Gemalto was acquired by Thales), the Big 3 has remained constant over the last decade.

And that’s where we are today…pending future developments.

  • If Alphabet or Amazon reverse their current reluctance to market their biometric offerings to governments, the entire landscape could change again.
  • Or perhaps a new AI-fueled competitor could emerge.

The 1 Biometric Content Marketing Expert

This was written by John Bredehoft of Bredemarket.

If you work for the Big 3 or the Little 80+ and need marketing and writing services, the biometric content marketing expert can help you. There are several ways to get in touch:

  • Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. 
From calendly.com/bredemarket. 

The Death of the Bicycle Will Triumph!

By 齐健 from Peking, People’s Republic of China – Down the Hutong, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18200257

This is taking forever.

We’ve been talking about the death of the bicycle since the time of the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford.

But we still haven’t achieved it.

Wilbur Wright building a bicycle two centuries ago before he came to his senses. By Wright brothers – Library of Congress CALL NUMBER: LC-W85- 81 [P&P]REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-ppprs-00540 (digital file from original)LC-W851-81 (b&w film copy, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2217030

What will it take to make the death of the bicycle a reality?

Why does the bicycle need to die?

I think that all intelligent people agree that the bicycle needs to die. But just to be extra-cautious, I will again enumerate the reasons why the death of the bicycle is absolutely necessary.

By Photo by Adam Coppola. – Photo by Adam Coppola taken under contract for PeopleForBikes, released into the public domain with the consent of the subjects.[1][2], CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46251073
  • The bicycle is too slow. Perhaps the bicycle was suitable for 19th century life, but today it’s an embarrassment. The speed of the bicycle has long been surpassed by automobiles from the aforementioned Ford, and airplanes from the aforementioned Wrights. It poses a danger as slow-moving bicycle traffic risks getting hit by faster-moving vehicles, unless extraordinary measures are undertaken to separate bicycles from normal traffic. For this reason alone the bicycle must die.
  • The bicycle is too weak. If that weren’t enough, take a look at the weakness of the bicycle and the huge threat from this weakness. You can completely destroy the bicycle and its rider with a simple puddle of oil, a nail, or a misplaced brick that a bicycle hits. This is yet another reason why the bicycle must die.
Illustrating the inherent weakness of the bicycle. By Björn Appel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=366355
  • The bicycle is too inefficient. Other factors of transportation are much better equipped to carry loads of people and goods. The bicycle? Forget it. Any attempt to carry a reasonable load of goods on a bicycle is doomed to failure.
An accident waiting to happen. By Emesik – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30211326
  • The bicycle is too easy to steal. It takes some effort to steal other factors of transportation, but it is pitifully easy to steal a bike, or part of a bike.
A bicycle wheel remains chained in a bike rack after the rest of the bicycle has been stolen. By Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4741181

Despite everyone knowing about these security and personal threats for years if not decades, use of the bicycle continues to persist.

And we have to put a stop to it.

Why does the bicycle continue to live?

The problem is that a few wrongheaded individuals continue to promote bicycle use in a misguided way.

  • Some of them argue that bicycles provide health benefits that you can’t realize with other factors of transportation. Any so-called health benefits are completely erased by the damage that could happen when a bicycle rider ends up face down on the pavement.
  • Others argue that you can mitigate the problems with bicycles by requiring riders to change to a new bicycle every 90 days. This is also misguided, because even if you do this, the threats from bicycle use continue to occur from day one.
Make sure your bicycle has a wheel, spokes, seat, and drink holder, and don’t use any of the last six bicycles you previously used. By Havang(nl) – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2327525

How do we solve this?

People have tried to hasten the death of the bicycle, but its use still persists.

Kill the bicycle in favor of superior factors of transportation. By Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA – 59 Edsel Villager, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40125742

We have continued to advance other factors of transportation, both from the efforts of vendors, as well as the efforts of industry associations such as the International Bus and Infiniti Association (IBIA) and the MANX (Moving At Necessary eXpress) Alliance.

Mascot of the MANX Alliance. By Michelle Weigold – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55459524

Yet resistance persists. Even the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which should know better, continues to define bicycle use as a standard factor of transportation.

The three most recognized factors of transportation include “something you pedal” (such as a bicycle), “something you drive” (such as an automobile), and “something you ride” (such as a bus).

NIST Special Publication 800-8-2. Link unavailable.

It is imperative that both governments and businesses completely ban use of the bicycle in favor of other forms of transportation. Our security as a nation depends on this.

Bill Gates has long championed the automobile as his preferred factor of transportation. From https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mugshot-bill-gates-arrested/

Do your part to bring about the death of the bicycle in favor of other factors of transportation, and ensure that we will enjoy a bicycleless future.

A personal note

I don’t agree with anything I just wrote.

Despite its faults, I still believe that the bicycle has a proper place in our society, perhaps as one of several factors of transportation in an MFT (multi-factor transportation) arrangement.

And, if you haven’t figure it out yet, I’m not on board with the complete death of the password either. Passwords (and PINs) have their place. And when used properly they’re not that bad (even if these 2021 figures are off by an order of magnitude today).

Feel free to share the images and interactive found on this page freely. When doing so, please attribute the authors by providing a link back to this page and Better Buys, so your readers can learn more about this project and the related research.

Oh, and about the title of this post. If you’ve heard of Triumph Motorcycles, you may already know that Triumph started as a bicycle manufacturer.

More on NIST’s FRTE-FATE Split

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

I’ve talked about why NIST separated its FRVT efforts into FRTE and FATE.

But I haven’t talked bout how NIST did this.

And as you all know, the second most important question after why is how.

Why the great renaming took place

As I noted back in August, NIST chose to split its Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) into two parts—FRTE (Face Recognition Technology Evaluation) and FATE (Face Analysis Technology Evaluation).

From https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/face-technology-evaluations-frtefate

At the time, NIST explained why it did this:

To bring clarity to our testing scope and goals

From https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/face-technology-evaluations-frtefate

In essence, the Face Recognition Vendor Test had become a hodgepodge of different things. Some of the older tests were devoted to identification of individuals (face recognition), while some of the newer tests were looking at issues other than individual identification (face analysis).

Of course, this confusion between identification and non-identification is nothing new, which is why some of the people who read Gender Shades falsely concluded that if the three algorithms couldn’t classify people by sex or race, they couldn’t identify them as individuals.

But I digress. (I won’t do it again.)

NIST explained at the time:

Tracks that involve the processing and analysis of images will run under the FATE activity, and tracks that pertain to identity verification will run under FRTE.

From https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/face-technology-evaluations-frtefate

How the great renaming happened in practice

What is in FRTE?

To date, most of my personal attention (and probably most of yours) was paid to what was previously called FRVT 1:1 and FRVT 1:N.

These two tests are now part of FRTE, and were simply renamed to FRTE 1:1 and FRTE 1:N. They’ve even (for now) retained the same URLs, although that may change in the future.

Other tests that are now part of the FRTE bucket include:

The “Still Face and Iris 1:N Identification” effort (PDF) has apparently also been reclassified as an FRTE effort.

What is in FATE?

Obviously, presentation attack detection (PAD) testing falls into the FATE category, since this does not measure the identification of an individual, but whether a person is truly there or not. The first results have been released; I previously wrote about this here.

The next obvious category is age estimation testing, which again does not try to identify an individual, but estimate how old the person is. This testing has not yet started, but I talked about the concept of age estimation previously.

Other parts of FATE include:

It is very possible that NIST will add additional FRTE and FATE tests in the future. These may be brand new tests, or variations of existing tests. For example, when all of us started wearing face masks a couple of years ago, NIST simulated face masks on its existing facial images and created the data for the face mask test described above.

What do you think NIST should test next, either in the FRTE or the FATE category?

More on morphing

And yes, I’m concluding this post with this video. By the way, this is the full version that (possibly intentionally) caused a ton of controversy and was immediately banned for nearly a quarter century. The morphing starts at 5:30. The crotch-grabbing starts right after the 7:00 mark.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTFE8cirkdQ

But on a less controversial note, let’s give equal time to Godley & Creme.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypMnBuvP5kA

Perhaps because of the lack of controversy with Godley & Creme’s earlier effort, Ashley Clark prefers it to the later Michael Jackson/John Landis effort.

Whereas Godley & Creme used editing technology to embrace and reflect the ambiguous murk of thwarted love, Jackson and Landis imposed an artificial sheen on the complexity of identity; a sheen that feels poignant if not outright tragic in the wake of Jackson’s ultimate appearance and fate. Really, it did matter if he was black or white.

From https://ashleyclark.substack.com/p/black-or-white-and-crying-all-over

But I digress. (I lied.)

Sadly, morphing escaped from the hands of music video directors and artists and entered the world of fraudsters, as Regula explains.

From https://regulaforensics.com/blog/facial-morphing/

One of the main application areas of facial morphing for criminal purposes is forging identity documents. The attack targets face-based identity verification systems and procedures. Most often it involves passports; however, any ID document with a photo can be compromised.

One well-known case happened in 2018 when a group of activists merged together a photo of Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and a member of their group. Using this morphed photo, they managed to obtain an authentic German passport.

From https://regulaforensics.com/blog/facial-morphing/

Which is why NIST didn’t just cry about the problem. They tested it to assist the vendors in solving the problem.

Ranking on Google is Not Enough. What About Ranking on Generative AI?

The vast majority of people who visit the Bredemarket website arrive via Google. Others arrive via Bing, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Feedspot, Instagram, LinkedIn, Meltwater, Twitter (WordPress’ Stats page didn’t get the memo from Elon), WordPress itself, and other sites.

Not on the list yet: TikTok, the search engine that is reputed to rival Google. I need to work on optimizing my TikTok content to drive viewers to the website. (And yes, TikTok is relevant, since there are Gen Z marketers who need services from a B2B content marketing expert.)

But TikTok is not the only site that is missing in Bredemarket’s list of visitor sources. Let’s look at an example.

Who is recommending Neil Patel Digital?

Neil Patel just shared a post in which he talked about a prospect who approached him. The prospect already knew about Patel, but added this comment:

(interestingly, I asked ChatGPT to search for good DM agencies for me and your agency is on the list haha)

From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

Yes, people are using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools as search engines.

Patel was curious about why ChatGPT recommended Neil Patel Digital, and he started to investigate. The details are in his post, but here are the two main takeaways that I found:

  1. I hope you’re not shocked by this statement, but sometimes ChatGPT yields inaccurate results. One example: Patel asked ChatGPT to recommend ad agencies who could provide SEO help, and received two inaccurate recommendations. “2 of the top 4 results… Moz and HubSpot are software companies and not ad agencies. They don’t really offer services.”
  2. After a lot of experimentation and number-crunching, Patel identified six specific factors that correlated with ChatGPT’s recommendation of a particular brand: brand mentions, reviews, relevancy, age, recommendations, and authority.
From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

For a detailed discussion of these six factors, see Patel’s post. Let’s look at one of those factors, brand mentions, that has a relatively high (0.87) correlation.

How do you increase brand mentions?

So, how do you increase brand mentions across the web to rank higher on ChatGPT, other generative AI platforms, and more traditional search engines like TikTok?

By mentioning your brand. (And getting relevant authorities to mention your brand also.)

Yes, this is a Captain Obvious statement, but it’s important. There are at least ten places where you can mention your brand.

  • Articles
  • Blog Posts
  • Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
  • Case Studies
  • Proposals
  • Scientific Book Chapters
  • Smartphone Application Content
  • Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
  • Web Page Content
  • White Papers and E-Books

If this list appears familiar to some of you, that’s intentional. It’s a list of the 10 types of external content that I have created for others, and can create for you. See my post “The 22 (or more) Types of Content That Product Marketers Create” for more information on both external and internal content types that I can create.

Because the more you look at my brand content, the more my brand will be recognized by generative AI.

I was curious myself, so I tested this. ChatGPT was at capacity when I wrote this post, so I asked Bard “Who is the biometric content marketing expert?”

From Google Bard, September 26, 2023.

John Bredehoft, of the company Bredemarket, is a biometric content marketing expert. He has over 25 years of experience in biometrics and other identity modalities, including friction ridge, face, iris, voice, and DNA. He has created content for Bredemarket clients and his previous employers, including case studies, white papers, and blog posts, that have positioned his firms as biometric authorities.

Bredehoft’s expertise in biometrics and content marketing allows him to create content that is both informative and engaging for his target audience. He understands the issues behind biometric technologies and can explain them in a clear and concise way. He also knows how to write content that is optimized for search engines and social media.

If you are looking for a biometric content marketing expert, John Bredehoft is a great choice. He has the knowledge and experience to create content that will help you achieve your marketing goals.

From Google Bard, September 26, 2023.

Now I don’t know yet if ChatGPT will yield a similar response, and if not I have some more work to do.

But enough about me.

How can you increase YOUR brand mentions?

Let’s talk about you, your content marketing needs, and your need for prospects and customers to know about your brand.

Whether you want to rank in a traditional search engine or generative AI, the key is the creation of content. When you work with Bredemarket as your content creation partner, we start by discussing your goals and other critical information that is important to you. We do this before I start writing your blog post, social media post, case study, white paper, or other piece of content (car show posters, anyone?).

Let’s hold that (complimentary) discussion to see if Bredemarket’s services are a fit for your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. 

From calendly.com/bredemarket. 

Alternatively:

Bredemarket logo

I Guess I Was Fated to Write About NIST IR 8491 on Passive Presentation Attack Detection

Remember in mid-August when I said that the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology was splitting its FRVT tests into FRTE and FATE tests?

Well, the FATE side of the house has released its first two studies, including one entitled “Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) Part 10: Performance of Passive, Software-Based Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) Algorithms” (NIST Internal Report NIST IR 8491; PDF here).

By JamesHarrison – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4873863

I’ve written all about this study in a LinkedIn article under my own name that answers the following questions:

  • What is a presentation attack?
  • How do you detect presentation attacks?
  • Why does NIST care about presentation attacks?
  • And why should you?

My LinkedIn article, “Why NIST Cares About Presentation Attack Detection…and Why You Should Also,” can be found at the link https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-nist-cares-presentation-attack-detectionand-you-should-bredehoft/.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-nist-cares-presentation-attack-detectionand-you-should-bredehoft/

What if Machine Learning Models Can’t Get Generative AI Training Data?

An image of a neural network. By DancingPhilosopher – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135594693

Machine learning models need training data to improve their accuracy—something I know from my many years in biometrics.

And it’s difficult to get that training data—something else I know from my many years in biometrics. Consider the acronyms GDPR, CRPA, and especially BIPA. It’s very hard to get data to train biometric algorithms, so they are trained on relatively limited data sets.

At the same time that biometric algorithm training data is limited, Kevin Indig believes that generative AI large language models are ALSO going to encounter limited accessibility to training data. Actually, they are already.

The lawsuits have already begun

A few months ago, generative AI models like ChatGPT were going to solve all of humanity’s problems and allow us to lead lives of leisure as the bots did all our work for us. Or potentially the bots would get us all fired. Or something.

But then people began to ask HOW these large language models work…and where they get their training data.

Just like biometric training models that just grab images and associated data from the web without asking permission (you know the example that I’m talking about), some are alleging that LLMs are training their models on copyrighted content in violation of the law.

I am not a lawyer and cannot meaningfully discuss what is “fair use” and what is not, but suffice it to say that alleged victims are filing court cases.

Sarah Silverman et al and copyright infringement

Here’s one example from July:

Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, as well as authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey — are suing OpenAI and Meta each in a US District Court over dual claims of copyright infringement.

The suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems.”

From https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-openai-meta-chatgpt-llama-copyright-infringement-chatbots-artificial-intelligence-ai

This could be a big mess, especially since copyright laws vary from country to country. This description of copyright law LLM implications, for example, is focused upon United Kingdom law. Laws in other countries differ.

And now the technical blocks are beginning

From https://www.kevin-indig.com/most-sites-will-block-chat-gpt/

Just today, Kevin Indig highlighted another issue that could limit LLM access to online training data.

Some sites are already blocking the LLM crawlers

Systems that get data from the web, such as Google, Bing, and (relevant to us) ChatGPT, use “crawlers” to gather the information from the web for their use. ChatGPT, for example, has its own crawler.

By Yintan at English Wikipedia, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63631702

Guess what Indig found out about ChatGPT’s crawler?

An analysis of the top 1,000 sites on the web from Originality AI shows 12% already block Chat GPT’s crawler. (source)

From https://www.kevin-indig.com/most-sites-will-block-chat-gpt/

But that only includes the sites that blocked the crawler when Originality AI performed its analysis.

More sites will block the LLM crawlers

Indig believes that in the future, the number of the top 1000 sites that will block ChatGPT’s crawler will rise significantly…to 84%. His belief is based on analyzing the business models for the sites that already block ChatGPT and assuming that other sites that use the same business models will also find it in their interest to block ChatGPT.

The business models that won’t block ChatGPT are assumed to include governments, universities, and search engines. Such sites are friendly to the sharing of information, and thus would have no reason to block ChatGPT or any other LLM crawler.

The business models that would block ChatGPT are assumed to include publishers, marketplaces, and many others. Entities using these business models are not just going to turn it over to an LLM for free.

As Indig explains regarding the top two blocking business models:

By Karl Thomas Moore – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58968347

For publishers, content is the product. Giving it away for free to generative AI means foregoing most if not all, ad revenue. Publishers remember the revenue drops caused by social media and modern search engines in the late 2,000s.

Marketplaces build their own AI assistants and don’t want competition.

From https://www.kevin-indig.com/most-sites-will-block-chat-gpt/

What does this mean for LLMs?

One possibility is that LLMs will run into the same training issues as biometric algorithms.

  • In biometrics, the same people that loudly exclaim that biometric algorithms are racist would be horrified at the purely technical solution that would solve all inaccuracy problems—let the biometric algorithms train on ALL available biometric data. In the activists’ view (and in the view of many), unrestricted access to biometric data for algorithmic training would be a privacy nightmare.
  • Similarly, those who complain that LLMs are woefully inaccurate would be horrified if the LLM accuracy problem were solved by a purely technical solution: let the algorithms train themselves on ALL available data.

Could LLMs buy training data?

Of course, there’s another solution to the problem: have the companies SELL their data to the LLMs.

By Nic McPhee from Morris, Minnesota, USA – London – 14-15 Dec 2007 – 034, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10606179

In theory, this could provide the data holders with a nice revenue stream while allowing the LLMs to be extremely accurate. (Of course the users who actually contribute the data to the data holders would probably be shut out of any revenue, but them’s the breaks.)

But that’s only in theory. Based upon past experience with data holders, the people who want to use the data are probably not going to pay the data holders sufficiently.

Google and Meta to Canada: Drop dead / Mourir

By The original uploader was Illegitimate Barrister at Wikimedia Commons. The current SVG encoding is a rewrite performed by MapGrid. – This vector image is generated programmatically from geometry defined in File:Flag of Canada (construction sheet – leaf geometry).svg., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32276527

Even today, Google and Meta (Facebook et al) are greeting Canada’s government-mandated Bill C-18 with resistance. Here’s what Google is saying:

Bill C-18 requires two companies (including Google) to pay for simply showing links to Canadian news publications, something that everyone else does for free. The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called “link tax”) breaks the way the web and search engines work, and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating access to news from Canadian publications….

As a result, we have informed them that we have made the difficult decision that, when the law takes effect, we will be removing links to Canadian news publications from our Search, News, and Discover products.

From https://blog.google/canada-news-en/#overview

But wait, it gets better:

In addition, we will no longer be able to operate Google News Showcase – our product experience and licensing program for news – in Canada.

From https://blog.google/canada-news-en/#overview

Google News Showcase is the program that gives money to news organizations in Canada. Meta has a similar program. Peter Menzies notes that these programs give tens of millions of (Canadian) dollars to news organizations, but that could end, despite government threats.

The federal and Quebec governments pulled their advertising spends, but those moves amount to less money than Meta will save by ending its $18 million in existing journalism funding. 

From https://thehub.ca/2023-09-15/peter-menzies-the-media-is-boycotting-meta-and-nobody-cares/

What’s next?

Bearing in mind that Big Tech is reluctant to give journalistic data holders money even when a government ORDERS that they do so…

…what is the likelihood that generative AI algorithm authors (including Big Tech companies like Google and Microsoft) will VOLUNTARILY pay funds to data holders for algorithm training?

If Kevin Indig is right, LLM training data will become extremely limited, adversely affecting the algorithms’ use.

Start Your Engines: Writing Your Non-Traditional Words

All too often, Bredemarket confines its writing discussions to the traditional ABCW (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) categories.

But what if your content needs are non-traditional and fall outside of the usual nice neat business writing categories?

From the 2023 Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion, Saturday, September 16, 2023.

If you are an Inland Empire business who needs words, but not in the traditional “ABCW” (articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers) business types, Bredemarket will help you with your non-traditional writing needs.

Take a look at the examples I’ve provided below, and if these spark interest within you, authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

  • Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
  • Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you. For example, if you’re an Inland Empire business requiring non-traditional content, fill out the form accordingly.
Example form from https://calendly.com/bredemarket/
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Here’s what I’m going to talk about in this post.

The traditional 22+ content categories

Sometimes I’m guilty of traditional thinking. Too traditional.

I won’t say a lot about this because I’ve said it before, but I’ve defined 22 fairly traditional categories of content that I (and Bredemarket) have created and can create.

22 traditional content types.

I won’t go into all 22 types again, especially since some of them are internal content rather than customer-facing content. But I’d like to highlight the “ABCW” four types that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, plus a couple of others.

Articles and blog posts

I’m lumping articles and blog posts together, because while some “experts” try to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between the two, they’re pretty much the same thing.

Whether it’s a blog post on your website, a post or article on LinkedIn, or even some extended text associated with an Instagram picture or a TikTok video, what you’re creating is some text that entertains, persuades, inspires, or educates your reader, or perhaps all four. You set the goal for the article or blog post, then tailor the content to meet the goal. (I’ll talk more about goals later.)

Case studies

From “How Bredemarket Can Help You Win Business,” available via this post.

Case studies show your readers how your solution was applied to someone else’s problem, and how your solution can benefit your prospects with similar problems.

Maybe your prospect is a city police agency that needs a tool to solve crimes, and your case study describes how your solution solved crimes in a similar city. Again, you set the goal for the case study, then tailor the content to meet the goal.

White papers

On the surface, white papers are informational, but when a company issues a white paper, the “information” that the white paper provides should gently guide the reader toward doing business with the company that issued the paper. Using the example above, you could write a white paper that outlines “Five Critical Elements for a Local Crime-Solving Solution.” By remarkable coincidence, your own solution happens to include all five of those critical elements. Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.

Briefs, data sheets, and literature sheets

One-page sheet for the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. More information here.

Perhaps you need to provide handouts to your prospects that describe your product or service.

Regardless of whether you call these handouts briefs, data, sheets, literature sheets, or something else, they should at a minimum contain both “educate” and “persuade” elements—educate your prospects on the benefits of your product or service, and persuade your prospects to move closer to a sale (conversion).

Again, you set the goal and tailor the content.

Web page content

If your business has a web page, I hope that it has more words than “Under construction.” Whether you have imagery, video, audio, text, or all four on your web page, it needs to answer the questions that your prospects and customers have.

You know what I’m going to say here, but it’s still important. You set the goal and tailor the content.

But…what if your business needs content that doesn’t fall into these traditional business categories?

Non-traditional content: going to a car show

I went to a car show this weekend—specifically, this year’s Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion in downtown Ontario, California. (Yes, I know that Route 66 actually passed three miles north of downtown Ontario, but work with me here.)

While some of the exhibitors were personal, some of them were businesses. As businesses, what was the major marketing collateral that they generated?

Not a blog post, or LinkedIn article, or any of the traditional business media collateral.

Their marketing tools were the cars themselves.

So perhaps you may assume that car show exhibitors don’t need textual content. Your assumption would be incorrect.

From https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ed9bn7lmtzA

In addition to the car itself, this exhibitor included poster boards with words describing the car.

Another exhibitor did the same thing.

So while these car show exhibitors didn’t choose a traditional way to convey their words, they shared written text anyway.

Your non-traditional business communication needs

Maybe you don’t have a classic car. Maybe you don’t have a car at all. Do you need to share words with your prospects and customers anyway?

Now I don’t know your business communication needs. You do. But I can guess a few things.

  1. Do you need to tell your clients/potential clients why you do what you do?
  2. Do you need to tell them how you do it?
  3. And last but not least, do you need to tell them what you do?

I know that this may seem like an unusual order to you. Why not start with what you do?

Because your customers don’t care about what you do. Your customers care about themselves.

If you keep the focus on your customers, the answer to the “why” question will induce your customers to care about you, because it shows how you can solve their problems.

Let’s illustrate this.

Why and how Bredemarket creates non-traditional content

You may be asking why I create content in the first place. There are countless content creators, both human and non-human. Why turn to me when OpenAI and its bot buddies are a lot cheaper and faster?

Normally I include my recent professional picture, but I have been writing since my college days (on a typewriter back then).

The simple answer is that I am obsessed with writing, and in this era of self-description, I self-describe as a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type. (It used to be a typewriter, but let’s stick to this millennium.) And with my many years of personal and professional writing, I’ve honed my ability to take concepts and make them meaningful to readers.

Which brings me to how Bredemarket works.

  1. Bredemarket’s service is independent of content type. I don’t have a “Bredemarket blog writing service” or “Bredemarket data sheet writing service” or “Bredemarket case study writing service.” My services are based on word length, not content type, with my most popular service targeted to customers who need between 400 and 600 words of text. From this perspective, I don’t care if you want the words to appear on your website or your social media channel or a paper flyer or a sign next to your car or a really really long banner towed behind an airplane. (Read about the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service here.)
  2. Before I write a thing, I ask your some questions. It won’t surprise you to learn that my first questions to you are why, how, and what. I then move on to questions about your goal for the content, the benefits of your solution, the target audience for your solution, and many additional questions. (Read about the Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You here.)
  3. Once the questions are out of the way, content creation is collaborative and iterative. I create a draft, you review it, and we repeat. The Bredemarket 400 service includes two review cycles; longer content needs include three review cycles. The goal is to ensure that both of us are happy with the final product.

Bredemarket’s process applies regardless of the specific content type, so I should be able to support whatever content you need, whether it’s traditional or non-traditional.

Can I help you?

And as an added bonus, here are some additional images from this weekend’s Cruisin’ Reunion. Enjoy.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SboKOAmL5w

Blogging: The Secret Growth Weapon for Riverside and San Bernardino County Firms

From the 2022 Cruisin’ Reunion in Ontario, California. The 2023 edition takes place this weekend.

(Updated blog post count 10/23/2023)

There are many ways for Inland Empire firms to raise awareness about their offerings. For certain firms, blogging provides quantifiable benefits. Can your firm take advantage of blogging’s fresh immediacy?

Blogging benefits

I recently wrote a post, “The Secret to Beating Half of All Fortune 500 Marketers and Growing Your Business,” that lists 14 quantifiable benefits from blogging. Here are the top 4:

Data source: Daily Infographic, https://www.dailyinfographic.com/state-of-blogging-industry
  1. Awareness: the average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors.
  2. Lead generation: B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not.
  3. Conversions: marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
  4. Conversions (again): 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.

Why Bredemarket?

If you need help writing blog posts so that your Inland Empire firm stands out, I, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, can help.

In most cases, I can provide your blog post via my standard package, the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. I offer other packages and options if you have special needs.

Get in touch

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

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How Identity and Biometrics Firms Can Use Blogging to Grow Their Business

(Updated blog post count 10/23/2023)

Identity and biometrics firms can achieve quantifiable benefits with prospects by blogging. Over 40 identity and biometrics firms are already blogging. Is yours?

Four reasons for blogging

My recent post “The Secret to Beating Half of All Fortune 500 Marketers and Growing Your Business” lists 14 quantifiable benefits from the fresh content from blogging, derived from an infographic at Daily Infographic. Here are the most important four:

  1. Awareness: the average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors.
  2. Lead generation: B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not.
  3. Conversions: marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
  4. Conversions (again): 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
Data source: Daily Infographic, https://www.dailyinfographic.com/state-of-blogging-industry

Blogging adds value.

Over 40 identity firms that are blogging

These firms (and probably many more) already recognize the value of identity blog post writing, and some of them are blogging frequently to get valuable content to their prospects and customers.

Is your firm on the list? If so, how frequently do you update your blog?

How your identity firm can start blogging

If you need help writing blog posts so that your identity/biometrics firm stands out, I, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, can help.

My identity blog post writing experience benefits firms who identify individuals via fingers, faces, irises, DNA, driver’s licenses, geolocation, and many other factors and modalities. I truly am a biometric content marketing expert and an identity content marketing expert.

A few more things about my blogging offering:

By Unknown author – postcard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7691878

In most cases, I can provide your blog post via my standard package, the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. I offer other packages and options if you have special needs.

Get in touch with Bredemarket

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

To discuss your identity/biometrics blog post needs further, book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. On the questionnaire, select the Identity/biometrics industry and Blog post content.

The Secret to Beating Half of All Fortune 500 Marketers and Growing Your Business

(Updated blog post count 10/23/2023)

Always take advantage of your competitors’ weaknesses.

This post describes an easy way to take advantage of your competitors. If they’re not blogging, make sure your firm is blogging. And the post provides hard numbers that demonstrate why your firm should be blogging.

Who uses blogging?

According to an infographic using 2017 data, 50% of the top 200 Fortune 500 companies had a public corporate blog.

Excerpt from the infographic at https://www.dailyinfographic.com/state-of-blogging-industry, cited by https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/business-blogging-in-2015

Which means that half of those companies don’t have a public corporate blog.

The same infographic also revealed the following:

  • 86% of B2B companies are blogging. (Or, 14% are not.)
  • 68% of social media marketers use blogs in their social media strategy. (Or, 32% don’t.)
  • 45% of marketers saying blogging is the #1 most important piece of their content strategy.
  • Small businesses under 10 employees allocate 42% of their marketing budget to content marketing.

So obviously some firms believe blogging is important, while others don’t.

What difference does this make for your firm?

What results do blogging companies receive?

In my view, the figures above are way too low. 100% of all Fortune 500 companies, 100% of B2B companies should be blogging, and 100% of social media marketers should incorporate blogging.

Why? Because blogging produces tangible results.

Blogging produces awareness

Blogging is an ideal way to promote awareness of your firm and its offerings. From the same infographic:

  • 77% of internet users read blogs.
  • Internet users in the US spend 3x more time on blogs than they do on email.
  • Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their websites.
  • 70% of consumers learn about a company through articles rather than ads.
  • The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors.

Blogging produces leads

Awareness is nice, but does awareness convert into leads?

  • Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than those who don’t.
  • B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not.

Blogging produces conversions

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8EnslW6Uao

Getting leads from blogging is nice, but show me the money! What about conversions?

  • Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
  • 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.

Take a look at those last two bullets related to conversion again. Blogging is correlated with positive ROI (I won’t claim causation, but anecdotally I believe it), and blogging helps firms acquire customers. So if your firm wants to make money, get blogging.

What should YOUR company do?

With numbers like this, shouldn’t all companies be blogging?

But don’t share these facts with your competitors. Keep them to yourself so that you gain a competitive advantage over them.

Now you just need to write those blog posts.

How can I help?

And if you need help with the actual writing, I, John E Bredehoft of Bredemarket, can help.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation.”
By Unknown author – postcard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7691878

In most cases, I can provide your blog post via my standard package, the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. I offer other packages and options if you have special needs.

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

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