It was a pivotal moment on a recent episode of the popular television series “24.” A terrorist operative uses a stolen card from an employee to gain access into the headquarters of the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU). As the camera closes in on the card reader, three familiar letters to electronic security professionals appear: HID.
It turns out that access control readers and other products from HID Corp. have been a part of the real-time action-drama since it first aired in 2001.
“They came to us and said we would love to have your products in the show,” says HID spokeswoman Angelina Lopez.
“24” is just one of several television and movie projects that have shown HID products prominently. This summer, HID readers will play an important role in the third “Mission Impossible” movie.
As the show has passed the midway point of its fifth “day,” there are a lot of contrasts from the earlier seasons besides a more aged look to Kiefer Sutherland as super-agent Jack Bauer. As HID’s products have advanced since 2001, the show has kept up with those advances. The metal-card readers of season one are long gone.
As “24” viewers know, however, suspension of belief is always a prerequisite to appreciate a series where the president always seems to be in Los Angeles during a terrorist attack, a commute across the whole city takes 10 minutes during rush hour and Bauer still has a job despite allowing one of his former CTU bosses to blow up in a nuclear explosion and shooting another in the back of the head.
With that in mind, Lopez says HID products seen in the series aren’t demonstration models.
“Sometimes, they do things that aren’t technically feasible with out products,” she says.
