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I Guess Envoc Remains Relevant On My Radar

Despite my prior assumption, Envoc remains relevant to those of us in the identity/biometric universe. Farewell LA Wallet, hello FaceLock.

When I first heard of Envoc

I worked for IDEMIA from 2017 to 2020, back when mobile driver’s licenses were starting to enter productive use. IDEMIA was pursuing the market, and Gemalto (later Thales) was also pursuing it with several proofs of concept. And of course Apple, Google, and Samsung would enter the market later.

But none of these big or really big companies was the first with a mobile driver’s license.

The first mobile driver’s license came out of Louisiana, from a company called Envoc.

“Envoc was founded in Baton Rouge to ship software that regulated institutions can bet on. Not consultancy decks. Not prototypes that rot in a drawer. Shipped systems with named owners and runbooks.”

Envoc worked on a variety of projects since its founding in 2003, but I didn’t hear about it until it launched LA Wallet (where the “LA” stands for Louisiana, not Los Angeles).

At which point I admit I turned up my nose.

“IDEMIA has been producing driver’s licenses for years. Gemalto has been producing driver’s licenses for years. What can this Envoc do?”

Well, Envoc could beat the big companies at their own game. Available for both iOS and Android, LA Wallet was the first state mobile driver’s license in the United States, allowing residents (according to my private research for a Bredemarket client) to access numerous government services (unlike California and some other states, where the number of entities accepting its mobile driver’s license is still limited).

The divestiture

But in December 2025, Envoc divested its LA Wallet business.

At which point I admit I turned up my nose.

“Well, Envoc will now go on doing whatever else it does, but I won’t ever encounter them again.”

I was wrong.

FaceLock: what Envoc is doing today

To learn how wrong I was, listen to ID Tech’s latest ID Talk podcast.

“In the latest episode of ID Talk, founder and CEO Calvin Fabre joins Tony Bitzionis and Alex Perala to recount launching the [LA Wallet] app in 2018…

“The conversation then turns to FaceLock, the identity verification platform Envoc launched this year. FaceLock compares a live 3D face scan, captured with FaceTec’s liveness technology, with the photo on a government-issued ID, then lets an organization issue a signed credential carrying a FaceTec UR Code that can be printed and checked without a network connection.”

Or if podcasts aren’t your thing, read what Biometric Update wrote.

“Fraud typically happens after onboarding, Fabre says, during a transaction like wire transfer, an account change or a remote enrollment. FaceLock credentials are issued with a comparison of a government-issued ID document with a selfie using FaceTec’s face biometrics and liveness detection.

“’FaceLock brings ongoing authentication to those high-stakes moments, using liveness and real-time challenges,’ the CEO says.”

Also see Envoc’s page on FaceLock.

In conclusion, Envoc remains relevant.

Failing Passive Human Verification: Apparently I’m Not Human

Passive human verification keeps bots out…and sometimes humans too.

So how do passive human verification “I’m not a bot” services work? From my experience, they don’t.

I wanted to learn what iOS 27 had, specifically about the visual intelligence feature (Siri mode in camera). So I clicked on the link and got stuck at the human verification step.

Passive human verification is stuck. — Yes, I’m stuck at your passive human verification step.

And no, I didn’t feel like troubleshooting.

Borrowing liveness detection terms, we all know about ACTIVE human verification, such as finding all the squares in a picture that contain traffic lights. In hindsight, a perfect task for non-human visual intelligence to perform.

I don’t know how passive works, but then again it doesn’t work so who cares?

And Visual Intelligence may not work for me either. This Apple source says it is available on “an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model or later.” When I played around on my older Apple Stoopid phone to see if I could get my Camera to invoke Siri or vice versa, no luck.

Passive human verification. Original at https://www.facebook.com/reel/1422905672693117/

Login.gov mDL Acceptance: Good and Bad News

Login.gov mDL acceptance (mobile driver’s licenses) for identity verification is live. Sort of. It depends on the wallet you use.

As Biometric Update announced, Login.gov now accepts mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) from some wallets. As I write this, the “Accepted ID types” page states that mDLs are accepted “in select digital wallets, including Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. Availability depends on your state, device, and wallet. We’re working to support additional digital wallets.”

I have questions.

I think it’s fairly obvious that they don’t accept IDs in Apple digital wallets. If they did, they’d certainly say so.

But what about state-specific digital wallets, such as the California and Louisiana digital wallets? They don’t say, so I guess you just have to try them and see if they work.

If Login.gov doesn’t accept your mDL, grab your physical wallet; those IDs always work.

Login.gov mDL acceptance varies. Google Gemini.

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Medieval Consultant Battles a Taxonomy Refresh Error

Take me back to the time when Bredemarket engaged in medieval consulting.

Google Lyria. Public Domain.

But then things got complicated.

If you have installed the Yoast SEO plugin, and you also access WordPress via JetPack on iOS, you may have to log out of and back in to JetPack for tags to work properly on iOS. Gemini:

“Because the WordPress iOS app relies heavily on the WordPress REST API to sync taxonomy fields (like categories and tags), adding a new plugin on the desktop side can cause the mobile app’s local cache or authorization token to throw a silent schema error when opening drafts.”

Don’t Go Chasing Watermarks

Yes, I’m finally to THAT issue: hidden watermarks inserted by Anthropic’s Claude (and by other AI tools via content credentials…sometimes). So let’s look at those first before looking at Claude, because that will be instructive.

Credentials from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity

Let’s go back to last November, when I noticed that LinkedIn inserted a symbol on a Google Gemini image I uploaded.

LinkedIn had detected image metadata that revealed the origin of the image.

I did not freak out over the revelation that the image in question was created by Google generative AI. I usually disclose such things anyway.

Unfortunately, this metadata is not always there, and not always revealed. If I download an image and then directly upload it to LinkedIn, the content credentials symbol appears. But if I directly upload it to Facebook or WordPress, it doesn’t. And if I upload it to WordPress then download it, the content credentials are often stripped.

To fix this we need durable content credentials…but we’re not there yet.

The Claude watermark

Which brings us to Claude.

Why did Claude do this anyway? According to Superpath, the European Union.

“The EU recently put the AI Act in place to regulate AI products and protect normies like you and me from potential risks of nefarious AI use. They’re mostly trying to prevent stuff like manipulation (e.g., deepfakes) and classification (e.g., facial recognition databases).

“Part of the AI Act forces LLMs like Claude to clearly label when content has been processed by AI.”

So Claude did it because it wanted to stay on the EU’s good side. Heck, even Apple abandoned the Lightning connector to appease the EU.

What is “processed”?

To understand what “processed” means, we need to understand the three uses of AI-generated text.

Don’t use AI-generated text at all.

Only use AI-generated text.

But the two extremes are rarely used (except for Bredebot). Instead we opt for the third choice.

Use a mixture of human-written and AI-generated text.

As you know from what I’ve shared before, I use AI for ideation (before I write a single word) and touch ups (after I have drafted it). So if the ALL CAPS material below represents AI-generated text, the true origins of my content may appear like this:

INCREASING REVENUE WITH Focused Messaging

HOW DO YOU GET PROSPECTS TO BUY? NOT WITH messaging that wanders through the plains like a drunken wildebeest.

So if some tool analyzed text that was partially written by Claude, you would get a confusing mishmash in which every fourth word was written by Claude and the other words weren’t.

Assuming you pasted the Claude output into your document. But what if you just read Claude’s suggestions…and manually typed them in yourself? No one would know.

What does this mean?

Now let’s look at the effects of Claude and other watermarks. Here’s what Superpath says:

“I am willing to put my stellar reputation on the line and confidently predict this will have little-to-no impact for B2B content folks who use (or don’t use) AI.”

Think about it.

The folks who insist that you should never ever use AI, Wikipedia, or Cliffs Notes already get bent out of shape when they see a single em dash—and they’ll continue to freak out if they discover Claude corrected the spelling of “ephemeral.”

The folks who are already freaked out over Bredebot’s 100% AI writings will continue to freak.

Everyone else won’t care. You would think that Bredemarket’s clients would want to know if I was really writing all my stuff for them, but as long as they like the output they never ask. (And I’m an opinionated writer anyway.) In fact, one client set me up with a paid Perplexity account to help in my analysis work for the client.

So I’ve dispensed with that tempest in a teapot and can move on to more important things…such as cultural appropriation in AI images.

Google Gemini. Check the woman with the mustache on the left.

The Really Big Bunch Isn’t Afraid of Biometrics Any More

Are the major tech firms about to drive the relatively miniscule identity/biometric firms out of business?

Don’t be evil: stay away from surveillance

I’ve previously discussed the “big three” in biometrics: currently IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales (although IDEMIA may be replaced by Amadeus at some point). These companies are seemingly big, with billions of dollars in revenue…but they are dwarfed by the “really big bunch” of Google, Meta, and whoever else you throw in the category.

The Really Big Bunch could smash the Big Three in a heartbeat, if they wanted to.

Why haven’t they?

Because they have very active consumer sales that don’t affect IDEMIA and the like, and are terrified that any entry into biometric “surveillance” will adversely affect their lucrative consumer business. So they all concentrated on “don’t be evil.”

This is why Amazon withdrew Amazon Rekognition, Meta and others are cautious about adding facial recognition to consumer products, and Apple loudly proclaims its commitment to privacy.

But is this changing?

First, the mobile driver’s licenses

IDEMIA and Thales offer physical driver’s licenses, and moving into mobile driver’s licenses is a natural. I observed this during my time at IDEMIA, as (then) Gemalto pursued numerous mDL opportunities and IDEMIA responded in turn.

As part of my efforts to educate myself in the driver’s license market dominated by our new corporate overlords MorphoTrust, I attended an AAMVA regional conference several years ago. IDEMIA was obviously there, as was Gemalto. But also attending the conference was Apple. Why? I asked.

Apple wasn’t visible over the next few years as IDEMIA and Thales expanded their mobile driver’s license implementations. But all of a sudden, Apple was visible, as was Google, as was Samsung.

Why? Because these smartphone providers all had their own wallets, and they were adding mDLs to their offerings.

Which meant that someone who wanted a mobile driver’s license could use the convenient smartphone wallet they already had.

Were Apple and Google entering the surveillance state? Of course not, because Apple and Google were really nice people who were providing these wallets for our convenience and benefit. Never mind the facial recognition underpinning their use. There was nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing.

Until they targeted the airports.

Second, TSA PreCheck

As a former IDEMIA employee, TSA PreCheck was near and dear to my heart. Well, until IDEMIA’s revenue tanked in 2020 when nobody flew or got driver’s licenses…and I lost my job.

But absent a worldwide pandemic, TSA PreCheck had been very very good to IDEMIA, since only IDEMIA offered it. Sure CLEAR had its program, but TSA PreCheck was much cheaper.

Until CLEAR also offered TSA PreCheck.

And Telos did also.

But who cares what these companies are doing? It’s not like a big company like Google is offering TSA PreCheck.

Fast forward to 2026.

“The Transportation Security Administration today announced a new partnership with Google Wallet, introducing a more seamless way for eligible travellers to opt in to TSA PreCheck^® Touchless ID. Google Wallet is the first digital wallet to offer this innovative feature, making secure, efficient travel easier than ever.”

Yup, Google and the Department of Homeland Security are now best buddies. To some civil libertarians, this is evil indeed.

What’s next?

So how long until the really big bunch prime contracts for systems such as NGI and HART? They have a responsibility to their shareholders, after all.

On Android APK Sideloading

Apple and Google (and probably Samsung) defend their lockdown of their app stores (and the resulting 15-30% or so cut they receive from app revenue) by saying that their “App Store” and “Google Play Store” provide safety to users. Would you want to risk your phone by downloading from sleazy sources, or would you prefer to get your apps from the name that you trust?

If that were true, I wouldn’t have to clean a particular person’s phone every once in a while because he downloaded an app from one of those stores, which then proceeded to download a bunch of other apps.

But on the other hand, there are sometimes legitimate reasons to “sideload” Android apps (Android Package Kits, or APKs) from alternative sources. Maybe the app is one that shouldn’t be accessed by run-on-the-mill consumers, so therefore an alternative distribution mechanism is needed. I could name some examples, but if I named them I’d have to kill you.

But as Lifewire notes, you have to take a few extra steps to allow downloads from outside the App Store and Google Play Store.

The biggest step, of course, is to allow the download of “unknown” apps from non-Apple/Google sources. Needless to say, you should only download apps from a site that you trust. No, not mikrosofft.com.

Open the Settings app and tap Apps or Apps & Notifications.

Tap the three dots in the upper-right corner. If you don’t see that, skip down to the next step.

Tap Special access, or Special app access on some Android devices.

Tap Install unknown apps.

Tap Chrome (or whichever web browser you use).

Switch the toggle next to Allow from this source so it turns on.

For more details on APK installation, check the Lifewire page.

The Apple App Store, Texas, and Developers

Microsoft isn’t the only company that works with developers, developers, developers, developers, and developers. And in Apple’s case, governments are dictating the terms.

“Due to a recent court ruling lifting an injunction on Texas law SB 2420, new Apple Accounts in Texas are now subject to the law, which introduced age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers. As previously announced, this includes age assurance and parent or guardian consent on behalf of minors under the age of 18 for downloads, Apple In-App Purchases, and significant changes associated with an app. Parents or guardians will also be able to revoke their consent for any app they previously approved for their child.”

For those who say that these local government laws are too complex for vendors to implement…the vendors are figuring it out. Apple is specifically providing a Declared Age Range API for developer use.

And for those who don’t remember Microsoft’s commitment to developers…

The Difference Between Localization and Nationalization

I am (mostly) not a programmer, but I’ve been exposed to materials developed for programmers, including materials from a company then known as Apple Computer.

Macintosh programming was new

The Macintosh was new at the time, and there was a learning curve for programmers who were used to character-based interfaces such as MS-DOS. In fact, some programmers were derided for putting DOS-like designs on the Mac platform.

Including Microsoft. Early versions of Microsoft Word used dot commands and other non-Mac interfaces, so we switched to another word processor (FullWrite Professional) which featured a true graphic interface. Unfortunately it was EXTREMELY slow, so we switched back to Word, dot commands and all.

But Apple Computer’s approach to development wasn’t just limited to the look and feel.

The resource fork

Pre-Mac, programmers would create code to compile into a single executable. Then if they needed, say, a French version, they would edit the code, take the English bits out, and put the French bits in.

But files in the original Macintosh File System had two parts: a data fork, and a resource fork. You could edit the resource fork without touching the data fork.

Which meant that it was a lot easier to create that French version of a program.

“Because all the pictures and text were stored separately in a resource fork, it could be used to allow a non-programmer to translate an application for a foreign market, a process called internationalization and localization.”

Localization

Or to create any version of a program.

Because of the ease of the process, software developers were not restricted to providing a single software version per country. Residents of Belgium, Canada, China, South Africa, and Switzerland could each receive software in their own local language. And the French Canadian version differed from the Swiss French version. (Or it should have differed.)

Software users received software just for them. And everybody won.

Sadly, this post is not localized, which is why non-U.S. readers are being bombarded with zeds.

Clifford Stoll Was Wrong AND Right

A former coworker reshared the story of Clifford Stoll investigating an accounting error and discovering a Cold War spy network. But a few years later, Stoll was wrong about the emerging Internet…and also right.

Stoll shared his views in a 1995 Newsweek article that was an amusing read after the fact.

Replacing your daily newspaper?

For example:

“The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper…”

Stoll lived long enough to see the decline of printed newspapers in the early 21st century.

Electronic books?

Another one:

“How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

Let’s pick this one apart piece by piece.

A book on disc? What’s a disc?

Yes, to some the myopic glow of an electronic book isn’t the best experience, whether on light or dark mode. But a traditional printed book cannot be read at all when you turn the lights off.
Stoll assumed that you would always need a laptop to read an electronic book. He did not envision dedicated electronic reading devices that were smaller than a laptop…to say nothing of “smart” phones with an “app” called “Kindle.”

Speaking of Amazon Kindles, you CAN buy books straight over the Internet. And music also, from a company that is no longer called Apple Computer.

So Stoll was not perfect. But he anticipated some things that we still struggle with today.

Unedited data!

“What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.”

While many companies from Yahoo to Altavista to Google to Wikipedia to OpenAI have tried to solve this problem, it is not fully solved.

And then there’s the biggie.

Isolation!

“What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing?”

Today’s world is actually worse than the one Stoll envisioned. Not only have I conducted most of my interactions with people over chat boxes and screens. But in 2026 we are now interacting with “HAL 9000” non-person entities…and we may not even know that they aren’t human, but synthetic or deepfake identities.

Despite the benefits of remote interactions—they’ve kept me (and my former coworker) employed—Stoll’s warnings about this new world remain valid.

Wrong but right

So I wouldn’t laugh at Stoll’s derision over the emerging Internet. If you were alive in 1995, be honest: did you anticipate THIS?