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In most privately-owned venues today, you probably take it for granted that AI-integrated cameras are tracking your every move. From casinos to concert halls to sports arenas, the degree of public surveillance we deal with is breathtaking.
For the most part, the consequences of this kind of private surveillance — severe though they may be — are rarely felt at the individual level. Sure our data is tracked, gathered, and sold for a profit, but it’s not like there’s a big game warden literally hunting you on the other end of the camera.
Unless, that is, you’re a random Knicks fan who found herself targeted by that bizarre surveillance apparatus.
In a sprawling investigation into the surveillance panopticon at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Wired found that venue owner James Dolan regularly abused his facility’s facial recognition equipment to stalk and harass critics, naysayers, and anyone he could start a petty beef with.
One of the main victims of Dolan’s security regime, the publication found, is a trans woman — Wired called her Nina Richards, a pseudonym to protect her identity — who became an obsession of MSG security chief, John Eversole. Serving as something like the grand architect of the Garden’s facial recognition panopticon, Eversole has been head of security at MSG since 2018.
Starting in 2021, Richards had become a regular guest in the lower bowl — near courtside — at New York Knicks games. This is when Eversole began his fixation, which would last for two years and end with Richards being banned from the property. According to security personnel who spoke to Wired, Eversole demanded his staffers compile dossiers called “work-ups” on the unsuspecting Knicks fan.
At Eversole’s request, MSG security lackeys routinely used the facility’s cornucopia of facial recognition cameras to follow Richards. As former staffers tell it, surveillance coverage generally began the moment Richards scanned her ticket, and continued anytime she got up from her seat to use the bathroom or chat with staff.
According to a lawsuit filed by former MSG security officer Donnie Ingrasselino, Eversole instructed his team to keep the woman “away from the players.” Though she hadn’t committed any violations and “posed no threat,” as one anonymous employee told Wired, Richards was nonetheless profiled “because of her gender identity.”
“She wasn’t taking pictures in restricted areas. She wasn’t trying to go places she shouldn’t be,” the anonymous staffer told the publication. “This is just a very large transgender woman, being a fan, walking around.”
As Ingrasselino would allege in his lawsuit against, Eversole was horrified at the thought that an “openly” trans woman might ever be caught that close to the court. If the broadcast cameras picked her up, Eversole allegedly said, it could seriously “damage MSG’s reputation.”
Eventually, Richards was banned from the Garden, after the MSG security chief “fabricated a stalking allegation,” Ingrasello alleged in his suit. The horrifying story is just a taste of the surveillance debauchery that seems to endemic to MSG — and a terrifying reminder that facial recognition devices are anything but passive.
More on surveillance: Man Suing City After AI Camera Flags Him For Wrongful Arrest
