MEDIA
Fox's prime time drama 24 has a brave front of believability: The good guys are flawed, cell phones drop out of range, guns run out of ammo - and it all unfolds in real time. (Series summary: Kiefer Sutherland plays a federal agent trying to foil an assassination plot against a presidential candidate.) But does it hold up to a reality check? We grilled cocreator Robert Cochran and writer Michael Loceff on some of the show's flashier tech moments. Then we surveyed real experts and scored 24 on a scale of 1 to 10.
INSTANT PASSWORD HACK
Kiefer Sutherland's character wants the password to his missing daughter's email account. "If I give you a phone number, can you give me all the Internet passwords connected to it?" he asks.
Behind the Scene: It's plausible, Loceff says, as long as you assume that "as a requirement for working in the Counter Terrorist Unit you had to have your lines monitored."
Expert Opinion: Good answer, says inspector Glenn Sylvester, a computer forensics expert for the San Francisco Police Department. "If you had a [packet] sniffer box installed at the ISP, you could get the passwords."
Creativity: 4
Plausibility: 8
SEVERED THUMB SECURITY SCAN
Kiefer Sutherland cuts the thumb off of a dead bad guy and tries to identify him by scanning the print of the dismembered digit using an optical scanner on his car's dashboard.
Behind the Scene: "Sure it's possible," Loceff says. "It's just a plain scanner getting a moisture print."
Expert Opinion: Some security-access scanners can detect and reject dead fingers by measuring blood flow, says Damon Wright of Identix, a company that makes biometrics systems. But "it's also absolutely possible to identify a dead individual or a dead finger," he says. (Arnold Schwarzenegger used the same trick in 2000'sThe 6th Day.)
Creativity: 3
Plausibility: 10
PLASTIC SURGERY IDENTITY SWITCH
To infiltrate a rally for the presidential candidate, an assassin gets plastic surgery to make him the spitting image of a photojournalist who has press access.
Behind the Scene: "If you get people with similar facial structures," Cochran says, the trick would work. To make it more believable, the producers "slapped a slightly bigger nose" on the actor (who plays both the journalist and the impostor) when in his assassin's role.
Expert Opinion: Unless the men's bone structures were very close, it's unlikely surgery alone could alter a face enough. Says plastic surgeon Katherine Young: "You would have better luck with hair and makeup."
Creativity: 7
Plausibility: 2
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