"The ‘Enemies List’ at Madison Square Garden" 18 January 2023

...[W]ith little warning or regulation, more and more companies have begun using facial recognition technology on their customers, they say as a security measure. So what happens when it’s actually being used to punish a company’s enemies?...

... Madison Square Garden has been using facial recognition technology going back to 2018, first used at the Grammy Awards. And it has primarily been using it to identify security threats — so fans who have been disorderly, who have been violent, who are essentially banned from coming in for safety reasons...[but] Nicolette is not a kind of traditional security threat. She is a lawyer. And she didn’t know it when she was stopped [when trying to enter Madison Square Garden], but she was caught up in this fight that was happening between the company that operates Madison Square Garden and her law firm. Her firm was representing an individual in a personal injury lawsuit against one of Madison Square Garden’s restaurants. And Nicolette is not involved in this lawsuit at all. But she does work at the firm...

...This case is exactly the kind of scenario that privacy advocates have been talking to me about — hypothetically, theoretically what was possible. They really don’t think that companies should have this power to discriminate between the customers who walk through their door and immediately know who they work for or what their ideology is because it really opens the door for all kinds of different discrimination...