The Shocking Secrets of MSG's Surveillance Machine: Noah Schachtman on Knicks' Owner James Dolan

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James Dolan, the billionaire owner of New York City’s Madison Square Garden and its affiliated sports teams, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers, is under fire after a bombshell investigation by Wired magazine revealed the inner workings of the arena’s extensive surveillance network. Dolan employs facial recognition technology to track and profile arena attendees. This reportedly included a trans woman who, according to a former security staffer, was targeted solely due to her gender identity, as well as lawyers who have been banned because their firms are involved in lawsuits against him. Dolan’s “spy machine” feeds information to Madison Square Garden’s sizable security forces, who operate beyond the arena itself, “acting as a kind of second ersatz police force in Midtown Manhattan,” explains Noah Shachtman, one of the authors of the Wired investigation. “It captures everyone, and some people get labeled as threats, even when they’re clearly not.” Dolan’s blacklist also extends to his other venues, including Radio City Music Hall, also in New York City, and Sphere, in Las Vegas. Even for those who never step foot in Madison Square Garden, Shachtman says, the system there “isn’t an outlier. It’s a model.”

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