Photo by Michael Discenza on Unsplash
In the hosting world, we spend half our lives worrying about who is accessing our servers. In the world of James Dolan and Madison Square Garden, the concern is about who is accessing the front door with a face they don't like.
The latest tension in New York City involves Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani calling out MSG Entertainment’s aggressive use of surveillance technology. This isn't just a philosophical debate about privacy; it is a direct reaction to the fallout from a significant data breach last year that pulled back the curtain on how extensively the venue tracks its visitors. As reported by TechCrunch, the criticism focuses on the intersection of biometric data and the power dynamics of a private entity controlling a public-facing landmark.
Dolan has famously used facial recognition to identify and boot lawyers who are involved in litigation against his companies. While that might feel like a personal vendetta, the underlying infrastructure is what should worry anyone in the tech space. When you collect that much biometric data, you aren't just building a security system; you’re building a honey pot for every bad actor on the internet. Last year's breach proved that even the biggest entertainment giants aren't immune to the gravity of data leaks.
The Liability of the Face
In the hosting and infrastructure industry, we’ve learned that the safest data is the data you never collect. If you don't store a credit card, you can't lose it. If you don't store a password in plain text, you’ve mitigated a disaster. Biometric data is different. You can rotate an API key. You can’t rotate your face—at least not without a very expensive and painful trip to a surgeon.
What we are seeing here is the friction between "Big Data" ambitions and basic operational security. MSG wants the benefits of a total surveillance state within its walls but hasn't demonstrated the ability to keep that data under lock and key. For business owners, this is a cautionary tale about scope creep. Just because you can track something doesn't mean you should, especially when the regulatory and reputational blowback starts hitting the mayor's desk.
I’ve seen plenty of companies pivot to "security first" only after they’ve been embarrassed in the press. Usually, that involves a new CISO and a few million in consulting fees. At MSG, it seems they’d rather spend that money on more cameras.
The Bottom Line
Surveillance is a technical solution to a social problem that usually creates a new technical problem: the massive liability of stored biometric data. If you’re going to act like a tech company, you better start securing your data like one.