As the U.S.A. Basketball delegation competes in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Sensormatic Electronics Corp. is protecting the teams using a hand-geometry biometric security system. Two weeks before the games, as the Men’s Senior National Team, also known as the Dream Team, trained in Maui, Hawaii, Sensormatic scanned the hands of each member and guests of the squad. Those digitized images were used to create a security system to protect the defending gold medalists. The hands of the members of the Women’s Senior National Team and their guests, also defending gold medalists, were scanned and entered upon their arrival in Sydney.
The system records a three-dimensional digital map of the hand and stores the information on a chip inside an accreditation badge. Athletes and guests entering secured areas will be asked to place their hands on a reader, which will then use RFID technology to compare the hand image to the information embedded in the badge. Sensormatic created badges for more than 500 people in Hawaii and estimates it will create another 5,000 while in Sydney. The company is also the official electronic security provider for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.
