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If you've been to a Knicks game, a Rangers game, or a holiday show at Radio City Music Hall, there's a good chance your face was scanned on the way in.[1] Now New York City's mayor says that shouldn't be allowed.
On Nov. 3, Mayor Zohran Mamdani criticized Madison Square Garden's owner over the company's surveillance technology and backed City Council bills that would ban businesses from using face scans to identify customers.[2]
The fight is happening in New York, but the technology isn't staying there. Arenas, concert venues, and even grocery stores are scanning faces at the door, and in most of the U.S., no law requires them to tell you.
Here's what Madison Square Garden facial recognition reveals about where venue surveillance is headed, and how it could affect you the next time you buy a ticket or go shopping. For a broader look at limiting your exposure, see our guide to removing your information from the internet.
Madison Square Garden has used face-recognition technology since at least 2018, according to Wired's investigation into owner James Dolan's security operation. The company scans the faces of everyone who enters its venues, including the Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and the Sphere in Las Vegas.
The system has been used to keep out people Dolan considers enemies. According to a lawyer in a shareholder lawsuit, MSG's security chief pulled photos of about 1,200 lawyers from the websites of more than 90 law firms with cases against the company and fed them into the face-recognition software.
In one widely reported case from 2022, a mom was stopped at Radio City while taking her daughter's Girl Scout troop to a Christmas show because her law firm was involved in litigation against MSG.
Wired also reported that MSG kept a database of nearly 40,000 celebrities, politicians, and their guests. Roughly 400 of them were given "risk" scores, often tied to social media posts criticizing Dolan or the team. Ninety-three entries were labeled "LGBTQIA," for reasons that remain unclear.
Some of that information became public in June 2026, when the hacking group ShinyHunters published 45 gigabytes of stolen MSG data. One leaked database contained more than 10.5 million entries, including 9,782,361 unique email addresses and 2,820,221 unique phone numbers, according to Wired's review of the files.
The files also included what appeared to be dossiers on activists who had criticized MSG's use of facial recognition, according to Fight for the Future, whose director was one of them. A class-action lawsuit followed.
MSG has disputed the reporting. A company spokesperson told Wired the investigation was "built on false, misleading and unverified allegations" and said the company was evaluating legal options. Dolan has since sued Wired.
You don't have to be a celebrity or a lawyer to get caught in a system like this. The people turned away at MSG include a graphic designer who sold a handful of "Ban Dolan" T-shirts years earlier, a parent at a children's holiday show, and fans who said they were wrongly added to the face-scan blacklist.
Wired reported that the leaked files contained several complaints from people who believed they'd been flagged by mistake.
That's the risk with face recognition in everyday places. Think of it like a bouncer with a photo album of everyone the owner doesn't like. If the album has the wrong picture, or the software mistakes you for someone in it, you're the one stuck outside the door. And there may be no easy way to find out why.
There's also the problem of what happens to the data: you can change a leaked password, but you can't change your face.
Wired said the leaked MSG files it reviewed didn't appear to include fans' face-scan data. But the breach showed that a company scanning millions of faces couldn't keep a customer list safe.
"A company that cannot secure a customer list has no business scanning our faces," said Darío Maestro, legal director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
MSG isn't the only one doing this.
In early 2026, Wegmans confirmed it uses facial recognition in some New York City stores, after shoppers noticed signs at the entrance saying the chain collects biometric data.
Those signs exist only because of a 2021 city law that requires businesses to post a notice when they collect biometric information.
Most Americans are already wary. Only 36% trust tech companies to use facial recognition responsibly, and just 18% trust advertisers to do so, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
New York City's current law requires only a sign at the door. The bills Mamdani backed would go much further. The bill would:
A second bill, Int. 428, would bar landlords from using facial recognition on tenants and their guests.
Both had committee hearings on March 2, 2026, and were laid over without a vote.
Int. 213-A has 29 council member sponsors. Mamdani also co-sponsored a similar state bill while serving in the New York State Assembly.
If NYC passes a ban, it could become a model for other cities, much like its 2021 disclosure law put biometric signs on store doors.
You can't opt out of a face scan at an arena door. But you can limit how much of your information ends up connected to it.
Madison Square Garden facial recognition shows what happens when a company can scan every face at the door with few limits on how it uses the data. People have been turned away over old T-shirts, their employers, and mistaken matches, and the company that ran the system lost millions of customer records to hackers.
New York City's proposed ban isn't law yet. Until rules are in place, the best thing you can do is notice where your face is scanned and limit how much other personal data is tied to it.
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[1] New York City's Mamdani criticizes Madison Square Garden owner over surveillance tech
[2] ‘Our Risk, Their Reward’: Zohran Mamdani on AI and Data Centers
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