In this special Stems we give over most of the issue to a walkthrough of James Dolan’s facial recognition panopticon, and speak to one of his biggest antagonists. As always, send tips, comments and AI covers of 50 Cent songs to [email protected]
MUSIC • MEDIA • TECH| Analysis |
The Arena is Watching: An Eventgoer’s Guide to MSG’s Surveillance Network
MSG’s use of biometric tools is spreading to other venues nationwide. “There are venues all around the country that are using facial recognition,” says lawyer Blake Yagman. “And we don’t know what they’re using it for.”
The glow from the Knicks' finals win hasn't even begun to fade, and thanks to a fresh leak from the hacker group ShinyHunters, we've gotten a reminder of how MSG owner James Dolan has turned Madison Square Garden into a private surveillance state, along with new details on how it works.
Unfortunately, this is not just a New York area story. MSG is at the vanguard of spying on event-goers, but Xtract One, the company that makes the camera-laden metal detectors at MSG, has sold its technology to more than 37 venues across the country. Not all are doing biometric scans — Xtract One also sells less-invasive AI weapons detectors — but similar security tech is being used at other Dolan venues, including Las Vegas’s Sphere, where in October 2023 a young girl was flagged as a “Priority 8” watchlist entry after entering the venue. Dolan himself has invested six million dollars in Xtract One, and his chief security officer, John Eversole, has been an evangelist for the tech with his peers across the country.
The best argument for blanket surveillance at major venues is the potential for a mass shooting or terrorist attack, such as the Bataclan in Paris in 2015, or the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017. But according to Wired, there has been little apparent coordination between MSG and law enforcement; plans to incorporate FBI most-wanted lists, according to an MSG insider, fizzled out. Instead, this surveillance net appears to be used primarily by Dolan’s organization to settle scores, ban people that Dolan doesn’t like, and flag people who are writing in protest of this very surveillance. “There are venues and entities all around the country that are using facial recognition and we don’t know what they’re using it for,” said data privacy attorney Blake Yagman, who is representing the plaintiff in a new class-action suit against MSG stemming from the ShinyHunters breach. “And that should scare people.”
One of those banned people is Yagman himself, who was involved in the original 2023 lawsuit over MSG's ban on attorneys from firms with litigation against Dolan. "I've been banned from MSG for quite some time," he told me, "and the way that I've been banned is through using facial recognition to ban me for speaking out against facial recognition."
Yagman helped give me a sense of where all this surveillance is actually happening at MSG; I also drew on court documents and other reporting. Here’s a walkthrough:
01 — Outside the Venue
The software MSG’s cameras feed into is called eConnect. Biometric data from millions of event-goers across multiple venues is uploaded into it, along with names, addresses, emails, and, if you’re on a watchlist, your threat level and addition profile notes. According to a former MSG employee, the head of security allegedly urged team members to patrol surrounding streets and even “embed” themselves in nearby protests. MSG has added journalists and everyday people to the watchlist — including a graphic designer blocked from a Dolan venue for selling a handful of T-shirts reading “Ban Dolan” years earlier.
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