Last week, the New York Attorney General’s office sent Madison Square Garden Entertainment a letter demanding answers. The state’s top law enforcement agency wants to know more about how the company operating Radio City Music Hall and the storied arena where the NBA’s Knicks play uses a face recognition system to deny entry to certain people, and in particular lawyers representing clients in dispute with Madison Square Garden. The letter says that because the ban is thought to cover staff at 90 law firms, it may exclude thousands of people and deter them from taking on cases "including sexual harassment or employment discrimination claims.”
Since the face recognition system became widely known in recent weeks, MSG’s management has stood squarely behind the idea of checking faces at the door with algorithms. In an unsigned statement, the company says its system is not an attack on lawyers, though some are “ambulance chasers and money grabbers.”
The venue’s use of face recognition underscores the recent spread of the technology at sporting events. The trend is driven by a desire to quickly authenticate ticket holders’ identity and get them into stadiums and concert venues. But civil rights groups warn that face recognition installed with seemingly benign intent can be adapted to other, more concerning uses.
MSG started using face recognition to look for people deemed security threats in 2018. That same year, the New York Mets and New York Yankees were among nine ballparks in a biometric identification trial between Major League Baseball and Clear, a company that offers fast-track identity verification at 50 airports in the Canada and the US.
The first Mets face recognition trial was limited to checking the identity of players and staff entering the stadium, but at the end of the 2021 season the Mets started using the technology with a select number of season ticket holders. When the 2023 season starts in March, in what the Mets call a first for an MLB team, all fans will be able to use face recognition to get into Citi Field.
The Mets want to continue finding other use cases for the technology, such as paying with your face for food and drinks, says VP of technology Oscar Fernandez, but the entry program is not designed to limit access to any group. “That’s not something this program is at all being applied to,” he says. “This is all about using your ticket to get into the stadium.”