We often think of enforcement biometrics. What about carefree biometrics?
Fingerprinting and facial recognition in particular were heavily associated with law enforcement and intelligence applications that welfare recipients feared their biometrics would immediately go to the police. It’s wasn’t until Apple used fingerprints (Touch ID) and faces (Face ID) to unlock phones that people stopped thinking of Big Brother privacy-violating biometrics. Well, partially.
But what if we thought of biometrics as our friend? Maybe the Big Three could show carefree scenes of biometrics as the gateway to fun.
Competitive competitive analysis? Yes, competitive analysis can be…um…competitive.
One company, multiple competitors
Biometric companies can offer a variety of products and services. One European company in particular (that I will not name) offers everything from edge solutions to complete systems.
Competitive competitive analysis. Google Gemini.
Which puts the company in the crosshairs of multiple Bredemarket clients, each of which competes against various aspects of the competitor’s product line.
Now the Green Widget Company may not care about the competitive products that interest the Blue Widget Company, and vice versa. But the fuller view of the competitor may provide implicit benefits to both firms.
And Bredemarket gets multiple chances to employ its biometric expertise to convince prospects that the European company is different…in a bad way.
Too late?
Competitive competitive analysis. Google Gemini.
And if the European company approaches Bredemarket, I will have to say no. I’m already working with their competition.
Competitive competitive analysis. Music Google Lyria. Public Domain.
So what? This means that learning about my services https://bredemarket.com/watch-book/ may not be enough. I may not be able to work with you. If you’re competing in the biometric space and need targeted competitive positioning, reach out today (at the link above) before your market segment is booked.
I am John E. Bredehoft, and I have enjoyed writing for a while now. And for a while I’ve been able to make a living at it.
I guess I’m a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type.
Anyway, things were going well in my corporate career, and I had even celebrated my 25 year anniversary with IDEMIA and its corporate predecessors. (I wrote about that here.)
The “Wildebeests” is a long story. Google Gemini.
Less than a month later, I became a “free agent” due to COVID. Now some other people don’t describe what happened to me as “becoming a free agent.” They describe it as “being laid off.” (And, as you can guess, I wrote about that also, right here.)
After several consulting requests, I formally started Bredemarket. Bredemarket helps identity (biometric/secure document), technology, and other companies craft the words to communicate with technical and non-technical audiences. Think of me as the “town crier” who helps you to get your message out—but without the bell, the loud voice, or the special costume.
Public Domain.
Specifically, I offer content, proposal, and analysis services. (I’m a CPA…not a CPA.)
NotebookLM creates video shorts now, so I created one based on thesetwo posts. Why does the FBI certify evil Communist Chinese products? And why does Europe rely on American certifications?
Correction: because the video short is…short, it addressed the first question but not the second.
What does it take to get a product onto the FBI Certified Products List?
So I created a second short on the second topic. (Mostly accurate; NIST doesn’t manage the Certified Products List.)
Tech sovereignty.
Plus an infographic as long as I was at it. Even though infographics don’t thrill me. Too danged busy. Although this one isn’t too bad.
Global Biometric Certifications.
Repurposing is good, even if the output is canned. If NotebookLM incorporated more advanced style guides so the content looked like mine rather than Google’s, it would be dangerously useful.
But remember one caution. I only use NotebookLM to process (a) my own content, and (b) non-copyrighted content such as U.S. Government publications. Be cautious of feeding someone else’s copyrighted content into NotebookLM. It’s probably legal, but…
Making it easier for fans to enter stadiums or concert halls, and to purchase refreshments, by using biometrics rather than paper tickets.
Making it easier for venue authorities to identify persons who have been banned from attending events. For example, football hooligans.
There are many examples of venue identity other than the two that I’ve worked on.
The latest example of vendor identity and privacy
Including the latest from Veridas. And the Veridas effort lists a third purpose for these biometric controls.
“For example, a customer who can buy several tickets for a group, purchase one as a gift, or later be unable to attend. In such cases, an identity-linked system needs a way to reassign a ticket to another verified person.
“Without this process, controls intended to prevent anonymous transfers could also block legitimate changes in attendance. IdBase says its platform can manage secondary-market activity.”
Oh, and there’s one more thing:
“Biometric authentication also makes account sharing and anonymous purchasing more difficult.”
Ramifications of the loss of privacy
Those words “anonymous purchasing” never resonated with me before, probably because I’m so embedded in the industry.
You probably heard about the Congressional hearing in which someone asked a witness about his attendance at an Atlanta Hawks game. (And you probably know that the witness actually attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game.) While there were, um, trumped-up questions about why said witness was in Atlanta, attendance at the game itself was not necessarily controversial.
But what if I buy a ticket for an event that some may consider controversial?
A lack of venue identity and privacy? Google Gemini.
A ticket to a concert in which the headliner is notorious for lewd behavior?
Or a ticket to a soccer match in which one of the participants is a controversial country? Like Russia or (shudders) Canada?
Or perhaps a ticket to see a comedian who specializes in impersonating George Carlin or Richard Pryor?
Most chillingly, what about a ticket to an event for a fringe political candidate, or any political candidate?
I confess my attendance at a political event
Back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I attended a 1977 political rally at which the featured guest was former President Gerald Ford. I did not have to provide identification, which is just as well because I didn’t have any. No one cared who attended that event, as long as Sara Jane Moore or Squeaky Fromme didn’t drop by (both were unavailable). Perhaps the U.S. Secret Service silently monitored a few attendees , but no one tried to monitor EVERYBODY.
But now we have the technology to monitor everybody, and to retain the records of everyone who attended a particular event…just in case someone has “a few questions” for us in the future.
How do we govern these attendance records? Do venues retain records after the event? If so, who has access to them? What are the procedures for granting access to the attendance records?
Maybe we, including those of us in the identity industry, should start asking.
Anyway, that’s my (current) thought piece of the topic. If you have your own thoughts, I can help you write them down. Contact me at https://bredemarket.com/watch-book/.
Considering the right consultant for your biometric firm often comes down to a single, make-or-break dynamic: biometric domain fluency.
But that’s just a fancy phrase for knowing what you’re talking about.
“The Longest Hour.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.
Consider what happens when a product marketing consultant at a biometric firm does NOT possess biometric domain fluency.
Off-target content
Imagine that you’re writing your first blog post for a biometric company. So you figure you’ll get educational by telling your prospects how “Gender Shades” identified huge accuracy problems, but your firm’s facial recognition algorithm has overcome them.
Google Gemini.
Congratulations, novice. You just mixed two distinctly different things up.
I’ve addressed this before, but I’ll address it again. Do you know why that old study was called “Gender Shades”? Because it tested algorithmic ability to recognize gender and race. That is facial ANALYSIS (or categorization), not facial RECOGNITION (or individualization). The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) draws a clear distinction between the two. And if you use a high-quality facial recognition application, the gallery of possible matching candidates may have a white woman next to a black man…because the facial recognition algorithm DOESNOTCARE about gender or race.
And that’s just one example of how someone who doesn’t know biometrics can make a grievous mistake that repels a firm’s prospects.
Losing proposals
Before I launch into this, let me explain that there are a number of reasons why a firm may lose a proposal.
Not submitting your proposal in Times New Roman 12 font with one-inch margins.
Submitting a 16-page proposal when the page limit is 15 pages.
Submitting your proposal Friday at 5:03 pm when it was due at 5 pm.
Here I want to talk about something different: getting the answers wrong.
Let’s say you’re tasked to answer a question about submitting your fingerprints at 500 pixels per inch (ppi). But you want to get some extra evaluation points, so you write this:
“The Super Duper Ridger fingerprint reader EXCEEDS THE REQUIREMENT by capturing fingerprints at 1000 ppi.”
Granted, latent fingerprint examiners LOVE higher resolution tenprints and latent prints where they can see the finer detail. But for everyone else, high resolution prints can potentially cause huge problems. Longer time to display images on the screen. Longer network transmission time and higher network bandwidth. Oh, and four times as much storage space. If the agency specifies 500 ppi, they mean what they say.
You have to know your biometrics to answer the questions properly.
Flawed analysis
Sometimes, product marketing consultants need to strategically analyze the market. Or the products in the market. Or the competitors who sell the products in the market. Analysis is a minefield in which an inexperienced person can get blown up.
Let’s say you’re asked to identify the leading facial recognition algorithm providers for U.S. intelligence community agencies. Now you, being a smart person who knows the difference between face recognition and face analysis, hone in on NIST’s Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRTE) collection. You go to FRTE 1:N, identify the specific test that best meets the needs of the intelligence community, and sort the list with the most accurate algorithms at the top. You then report results for all the leading vendors…including CloudWalk, Megvii, and SenseTime.
Google Gemini or Imagen; I can’t remember which.
Congratulations, novice. The firm that contracted with you will NEVER get intelligence business.
All three of the firms I mentioned are Chinese firms. Just because NIST or the FBI tests an algorithm doesn’t mean that U.S. agencies will buy it. For legal and practical reasons, the CIA is not going to install a Chinese algorithm on one of its systems.
No point in performing a competitive analysis on firms that will never compete in your markets.
Avoid these problems by contracting biometric domain fluency
You can avoid these problems by contracting with a product marketing consultant who offers biometric domain fluency.
Such as Bredemarket.
My wife passed by me while I was drafting this post, and when I told her I was writing about biometric domain fluency, she was not impressed.
Then again, she is not an identity marketing leader.
But if YOU are an identity marketing leader, consider Bredemarket for your consulting needs.
Watch and book.
Learn about what I can do for your firm and schedule a free meeting.
