Robert Silverman

So there have been reports leaking out since 2018 that Madison Square Garden was using facial recognition technology of one sort or another in their venues.

And I should add that the MSG company both includes Madison Square Garden, the iconic Radio City Music Hall,

The Beacon Theater, and more recently, The Sphere in Las Vegas.

Anyway, reports have been going on for several years, but what really started to break things open was a lawsuit in September of 2025 by a former Madison Square Garden security staffer who basically sued his bosses.

And so we used that opportunity to go start digging and take a look, and we found some remarkable stuff.

Right.

Well, I think just the shorthand is that Jim Dolan is an incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful media and sports executive.

And, like, the key thing, if you've just got to shorthand him, is he has a band called J.D.

and the Straight Shot.

And their most famous tune is about his former friend Harvey Weinstein, and it's called I Should Have Known.

So that is what a shorthand.

I'll talk about the current iteration of it because it's evolved over time.

So the current iteration of it is that around Madison Square Garden, to get into the venue, you have to pass by these kind of New Jack metal detectors.

It's by a company called Extract One.

That's extract with an X.

Those have a series of cameras attached to them.

Those cameras are running facial recognition algorithms.

And if there's a hit, that's fed into a larger video management system that can either alert security right away or track the person throughout anywhere they go in the garden.

Who does he use this on?

Well...