Apologies in advance, but if you’re NOT interested in fingerprints, you’ll want to skip over this Bredemarket identity/biometrics post, my THIRD one about fingerprint uniqueness and/or similarity or whatever because the difference between uniqueness and similarity really isn’t important, is it?
Yes, one more post about the study whose principal author was Gabe Guo, the self-styled “inventor of cross-fingerprint recognition.”
I also wrote something only on LinkedIn (and Facebook) that cited a CNN article that quoted Christophe Champod and Simon Cole. (Interestingly enough, my last post on Cole concerned how words matter, which is appropriate in this discussion.) Unfortunately, the person who wrote the CNN headline (“Are fingerprints unique? Not really, AI-based study finds”) didn’t pay attention to a word that Champod and Simon Cole said.
But don’t miss this
Well, two other people have weighed in on the paper: Glenn Langenburg and Eric Ray, co-presenters on the Double Loop Podcast. (“Double loop” is a fingerprint thing.)
So who are Langenburg and Ray? You can read their full biographies here, but both of them are certified latent print examiners. This certification, administered by the International Association for Identification, is designed to ensure that the certified person is knowledgeable about both latent (crime scene) fingerprints and known fingerprints, and how to determine whether or not two prints come from the same person. If someone is going to testify in court about fingerprint comparison, this certification is recognized as a way to designate someone as an expert on the subject, as opposed to a college undergraduate. (As of today, the list of IAI certified latent print examiners as of December 2023 can be found here in PDF form.)
Podcast episode 264 dives into the Columbia study in detail, including what the study said, what it didn’t say, and what the publicity for the study said that doesn’t match the study.
Eric and Glenn respond to the recent allegations that a computer science undergraduate at Columbia University, using Artificial Intelligence, has “proven that fingerprints aren’t unique” or at least…that’s how the media is mischaracterizing a new published paper by Guo, et al. The guys dissect the actual publication (“Unveiling intra-person fingerprint similarity via deep contrastive learning” in Science Advances, 2024 by Gabe Guo, et al.). They state very clearly what the paper actually does show, which is a far cry from the headlines and even public dissemination originating from Columbia University and the author. The guys talk about some of the important limitations of the study and how limited the application is to real forensic investigations. They then explore some of the media and social media outlets that have clearly misunderstood this paper and seem to have little understanding of forensic science. Finally, Eric and Glenn look at some quotes and comments from knowledgeable sources who also have recognized the flaws in the paper, the authors’ exaggerations, and lack of understanding of the value of their findings.
Yes, the episode is over an hour long, but if you want to hear a good discussion of the paper that goes beyond the headlines, I strongly recommend that you listen to it.
TL;DR
If you’re in a TL;DR frame of mind, I’ll just offer one tidbit: “uniqueness” and “similarity” are not identical. Frankly, they’re not even similar.
Let’s say that your identity/biometric firm has decided that silence ISN’T golden, and that perhaps your firm needs to talk about its products and services.
So you turn to your favorite generative AI tool to write something that will represent your company in front of everyone. What could go wrong?
Battling synthetic identities requires a multi-pronged approach. Layering advanced technology is key: robust identity verification using government-issued IDs and biometrics to confirm a person’s existence, data enrichment and validation from diverse sources to check for inconsistencies, and machine learning algorithms to identify suspicious patterns and red flags. Collaboration is crucial too, from financial institutions sharing watchlists to governments strengthening regulations and consumers practicing good cyber hygiene. Ultimately, vigilance and a layered defense are the best weapons against these ever-evolving digital phantoms.
From Google Bard.
Great. You’re done, and you saved a lot of money by NOT hiring an identity blog writing expert. The text makes a lot of important points, so I’m sure that your prospects will be inspired by it.
Bot-speak is not an optimal communication strategy either. Generated at craiyon.com.
Well…
…until your prospects ask what YOU do and how you are better than every other identity firm out there. If you’re the same as all the other “me too” solutions, then your prospects will just go with the lowest price provider.
So how do you go about intelligently writing about biometrics?
Intelligently writing about biometrics doesn’t only require some critical words such as “validation.”
Intelligently writing about biometrics doesn’t only require that you KNOW what those words mean, and that you’re conversant in basic biometric topics. (If you want to know five topics a biometric content marketing expert needs to understand, read my post on that subject.)
Intelligently writing about biometrics requires that you put all of this information together AND effectively communicate your message…
…including why your identity/biometrics firm is great and why all the other identity/biometric firms are NOT great.
If you’re doing this on your own, be sure to ask yourself a lot of questions so that you get started on the right track.
If you’re asking Bredemarket to help you create your identity/biometric content by intelligently writing about biometrics, I’ll take care of the questions.
Oh, and one more thing: if you noted my use of the word “no siree” earlier in this post, it was taken from the Talking Heads song “The Big Country.” Here’s an independent video of that song, especially recommended for people outside of North America who may not realize that the United States and Canada are…well, big countries.
On behalf of a recruiter I am re-examining my consulting experience in the identity/biometric industry, and came to this realization:
If Bredemarket hasn’t consulted for you, it’s a guarantee that Bredemarket has applied its 29 years of identity/biometric experience consulting for your competitors.
Do you want your competitors to realize all the benefits?
Most importantly, why this may, or may not, impact you.
(Long-time readers of the Bredemarket blog see what I did there. In reverse.)
What are WhatsApp channels?
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and half the known universe, wants to keep people on those social platforms. They can check out any time they like, but they can never leave.
So now WhatsApp, the service that was originally intended for PRIVATE communications between people that knew each other’s phone numbers, is now your latest source for Kardashians news. Seriously; there are millions of people who follow the Daily Mail’s “Kardashians News” channel.
WhatsApp, a widely used messaging platform, has recently introduced a revolutionary feature known as WhatsApp Channels. This innovation empowers businesses to thrive by effectively communicating with a broader audience, sharing vital information, and engaging with customers in a more personalised and efficient manner.
Revolutionary? Frankly, this isn’t any more revolutionary than the similar broadcasting feature in Instagram, with one important difference: not everyone can create an Instagram channel, but anyone with WhatsApp channel access can set up their own channel.
Which got me thinking.
How I was impacted by WhatsApp Channels
I began mulling over whether I should create my own WhatsApp channel, but initially decided against it. Bredemarket has enough social media properties already, and the need to put Bredemarket stuff on WhatsApp is not pressing (the “100” WhatsApp group members get enough Bredemarket stuff already). The chances of someone ONLY being on WhatsApp and not on ANY other channel are slim.
I’d just follow the existing WhatsApp channels on identity, biometrics, and related topics.
But I couldn’t find any.
So I created my own channel last Friday entitled “Identity, Biometrics, ID Documents, and Geolocation.”
Why should you care?
Why should you care about my WhatsApp identity channel? Maybe you SHOULDN’T.
If you don’t use WhatsApp, ignore the WhatsApp channel.
If you use WhatsApp but have other sources for identity industry information (such as my Facebook group/LinkedIn page), ignore the WhatsApp channel.
But if you love WhatsApp AND identity, here is the follow link for “Identity, Biometrics, ID Documents, and Geolocation.”
When talking about marketing tools, two words that don’t seem to go together are “marketing” and “Excel” (the Microsoft spreadsheet product). Because I’m in marketing, I encounter images like this all the time.
It’s true that marketing analytics requires a ton of Excel work. I’m not going to talk about marketing analytics here, but if you have an interest in using Excel for marketing analytics, you may want to investigate HubSpot Academy’s free Excel crash course.
As I write this, Bredemarket is neck-deep in a research project for a client. A SECRET research project.
By Unnamed photographer for Office of War Information. – U.S. Office of War Information photo, via Library of Congress website [1], converted from TIFF to .jpg and border cropped before upload to Wikimedia Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989847
While I won’t reveal the name of the client or the specifics about the research project, I can say that the project requires me to track the following information:
Organization name.
Organization type (based upon fairly common classifications).
Organization geographic location.
Vendor providing services to the organization.
Information about the contract between the vendor and the organization.
A multitude of information sources about the organization, the vendor, and the relationship between the two.
To attack the data capture for this project, I did what I’ve done for a number of similar projects for Bredemarket, Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, et al.
I threw all the data into a worksheet in an Excel workbook.
I can then sort and filter it to my heart’s content. Ror example, if I want to just view the rows for which I have contract information, I can just look at that.
Bredemarket as an identity/biometric research service
For one organization I created a number of different worksheets within a single workbook, in which the worksheet data all fed into a summary worksheet. This allowed my clients to view data either at the detailed level or at the summary level.
For another organization I collected the data from an external source, opened it in Excel, performed some massaging, and then pivoted the data into a new view so that it could then be exported out of Excel and into a super-secret document that I cannot discuss here.
Now none of this (well, except maybe for the pivot) is fancy stuff, and most of it (except for the formulas linking the summary and detailed worksheets) is all that hard to do. But it turns out that Excel is an excellent tool to deal with this data in certain cases.
Which brings me to YOUR research needs.
After all, Bredemarket doesn’t just write stuff.
Sometimes it researches stuff, especially in the core area of biometrics and identity.
After all, I offer 29 years of experience in this area, and I draw on that experience to get answers to your questions.
Unlike the better-bounded projects that require only a single blog post or a single white paper, I quote research projects at an hourly rate or on retainer (where I’m embedded with you).
Things change. Pangiam, a company that didn’t even exist a few years ago, and that started off by acquiring a one-off project from a local government agency, is now itself a friendly acquisition target (pending stockholder and regulatory approvals).
From MWAA to Pangiam
Back when I worked for IDEMIA and helped to market its border control solutions, one of our competitors for airport business was an airport itself—specifically, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Rather than buying a biometric exit solution from someone else, the MWAA developed its own, called veriScan.
2021 image from the former airportveriscan website.
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Pangiam, a technology-based security and travel services provider, announced today that it has acquired veriScan, an integrated biometric facial recognition system for airports and airlines, from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (“Airports Authority”). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
So what will Pangiam work on next? Where will it expand? What will it acquire?
Nothing.
Enter BigBear.ai
Pangiam itself is now an acquisition target.
COLUMBIA, MD.— November 6, 2023 — BigBear.ai (NYSE: BBAI), a leading provider of AI-enabled business intelligence solutions, today announced a definitive merger agreement to acquire Pangiam Intermediate Holdings, LLC (Pangiam), a leader in Vision AI for the global trade, travel, and digital identity industries, for approximately $70 million in an all-stock transaction. The combined company will create one of the industry’s most comprehensive Vision AI portfolios, combining Pangiam’s facial recognition and advanced biometrics with BigBear.ai’s computer vision capabilities, positioning the company as a foundational leader in one of the fastest growing categories for the application of AI. The proposed acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by the holders of a majority of BigBear.ai’s outstanding common shares and receipt of regulatory approval.
Yet another example of how biometrics is now just a minor part of general artificial intelligence efforts. Identify a face or a grenade, it’s all the same.
Anyway, let’s check back in a few months. Because of the technology involved, this proposed acquisition will DEFINITELY merit government review.
As identity/biometric professionals well know, there are five authentication factors that you can use to gain access to a person’s account. (You can also use these factors for identity verification to establish the person’s account in the first place.)
Something You Are. I’ve spent…a long time with this factor, since this is the factor that includes biometrics modalities (finger, face, iris, DNA, voice, vein, etc.). It also includes behavioral biometrics, provided that they are truly behavioral and relatively static.
As I mentioned in August, there are a number of biometric modalities, including face, fingerprint, iris, hand geometry, palm print, signature, voice, gait, and many more.
If your firm offers an identity solution that partially depends upon “something you are,” then you need to create content (blog, case study, social media, white paper, etc.) that converts prospects for your identity/biometric product/service and drives content results.
If you listen closely, you can hear about all sorts of wonderful biometric identifiers. They range from the common (such as fingerprint ridges and detail) to the esoteric (my favorite was the 2013 story about Japanese car seats that captured butt prints).
Forget about fingerprints and faces and irises and DNA and gait recognition and butt prints. Tongue prints are the answer!
Benefits of tongue print biometrics
To its credit, the article does point out two benefits of using tongue prints as a biometric identifier.
Consent and privacy. Unlike fingerprints and irises (and faces) which are always exposed and can conceivably be captured without the person’s knowledge, the subject has to provide consent before a tongue image is captured. For the most part, tongues are privacy-perfect.
Liveness. The article claims that “sticking out one’s tongue is an undeniable ‘proof of life.'” Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it is admittedly much harder to fake a tongue than it is to fake a finger or a face.
Are tongues unique?
But the article also makes these claims.
Two main attributes are measured for a tongue print. First is the tongue shape, as the shape of the tongue is unique to everyone.
The other notable feature is the texture of the tongue. Tongues consist of a number of ridges, wrinkles, seams and marks that are unique to every individual.
There is serious doubt (if not outright denial) that everyone has a unique face (although NIST is investigating this via the FRTE Twins Demonstration).
But at least these modalities are under study. Has anyone conducted a rigorous study to prove or disprove the uniqueness of tongues? By “rigorous,” I mean a study that has evaluated millions of tongues in the same way that NIST has evaluated millions of fingerprints, faces, and irises?
I did find this 2017 tongue identification pilot study but it only included a whopping 20 participants. And the study authors (who are always seeking funding anyway) admitted that “large-scale studies are required to validate the results.”
Conclusion
So if a police officer tells you to stick out your tongue for identification purposes, think twice.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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
By 2009, Safran (resulting from the merger of Sagem and Snecma) was an international powerhouse in aerospace and defense and also had identity/biometric interests. Motorola, in the meantime, was no longer enjoying the success of its RAZR phone and was looking at trimming down (prior to its eventual, um, bifurcation). In response to these dynamics, Safran announced its intent to purchase Motorola’s Biometric Business Unit in October 2008, an effort that was finalized in April 2009. The Biometric Business Unit (adopting its former name Printrak) was acquired by Sagem Morpho and became MorphoTrak. On a personal level, Dorothy Bullard moved out of Proposals and I moved into Proposals, where I got to work with my new best friends that had previously slammed Motorola for losing the Kansas and New Mexico deals. (Seriously, Cindy and Ron are great folks.)
By 2011, Safran decided that it needed additional identity capabilities, so it acquired L-1 Identity Solutions and renamed the acquisition as MorphoTrust.
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.
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