How MSG became Maximum Spy Garden under Knicks owner James Dolan
For 25 years, MSG has been shot through with a 'culture of paranoia' that stems straight from the owner's box
If you want to attend a Knicks or Rangers game this season or catch a concert at The World’s Most Famous Arena or Radio City Music Hall, know this: James Dolan will be watching you.
That the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. utilizes facial recognition technology—entirely, they insist, to maintain the safety of their customers—at all its storied venues, has been known for a while.
But the stories of lawyers being mobbed by security and forcibly ejected with a screaming child in tow, or fans booted from the arena for creating a “sell the team” t-shirt years prior, sharpen the picture.
Madison Square Garden isn’t just an arena. For Dolan, it operates like a fortress under siege—what digital rights advocates now describe to The New York Groove as a “surveillance panopticon.”
A lawsuit filed Thursday by former MSG security vice president Donald Ingrasselino lifts the curtain on just how far that obsession goes
Ingrasselino—a 49-year-old former New Jersey detective and DOJ agent—says MSG turned on him the moment he asked for basic accommodations to help with his disability. What followed, he claims, was retaliation dressed up as policy—a punishment for speaking out, while his whistleblower complaints were shoved into a drawer.
Ingrasselino says he was ordered to not just scan for unwanted guests, but pore through their personal and financial data to rustle up pressure points. Social security numbers, family photos, tax records, you name it—a “blatant and unjustified invasion of these individuals’ privacy,” the lawsuit claims.
These intrusions (and the lax protocols surrounding the data MSG culled) had little legal justification, by Ingrasselino’s account. Instead, the goal was to: “target personal enemies of the Company.”
Who counted as a Dolan antagonist? A lot of people. Beyond the thousands of attorneys whose firms had tangled with MSG and scores of angry fans, the New York State Liquor Authority was targeted, as were employees and vendors. Anyone the owner jabbed at finger at might be etched on their enemies list, like Mia, a transgender woman.
According to Ingrasselino, Mia committed the cardinal sin of socializing with a few Knicks. On Dolan’s turf, that wouldn’t be allowed.
“Keep him, or it, or whatever it is, away from the [Knicks] players,” his boss—chief security officer John Eversole—allegedly instructed.
Cisgender female MSG employees were also denigrated and sexualized, which should ring a bell. And Ingrasselino alleges he was ordered to record convos with woman who’d filed a lawsuit accusing Dolan of sexual assault. He refused, and was fired a month later. Her case was tossed by a judge one year ago.
Step into MSG and you’re potentially handing Dolan the keys to your life. And so far, no watchdog’s cry, no lawmaker’s rebuke, no bold-font headline and no chorus of boos has managed to pry them loose.
“Dolan quadrupling down on his use of facial recognition across MSG venues is pathetic,” Will Owen, a spokesperson for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P), told The Groove.
“New Yorkers should not have to sacrifice their privacy in order to enjoy [MSG]. And the use of this technology, I think, is a direct threat to that.”
He’s not just stifling dissent, Owen added. “Using [facial recognition] to discriminate against transgender people and other New Yorkers who are part of marginalized communities is absolutely disgusting. It really must end."
MSG did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement provided to The Athletic, MSG said the allegations were “baseless" and promised to contest them in court. “This is just another example of predatory law firms attempting to leverage the media and extort fees and payoffs,”
Madison Square Garden is not just a place to enjoy a game or concert; its history is woven into the fabric of the city, New York State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez told The Groove. But its importance means Dolan should be held to the highest standards. Gonzalez has stumped for legislation that would take away Dolan’s preferred form of spycraft. As of now, it’s stuck in committee.
“New Yorkers should not have to sacrifice their privacy in order to enjoy [MSG],“ said Gonzalez. “And the use of this technology, I think, is a direct threat to that.”
Moreover, the technology is far from perfect, particularly when scanning people of color. Both Owen, the S.T.O.P spokesperson, and Gonzalez stressed the frequent studies showing the ways in which facial recognition tech has failed to correctly identify Black and brown people, leading to increased racial profiling, potentially dangerous police encounters, and false arrests.
“This technology does not keep New Yorkers safe,” Owen said. “And even if the technology did work, it is far too discriminatory in how it is deployed to ever be acceptable at a venue like MSG.”
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A legacy of spy games
This is not new terrain for Dolan. For 25 years, MSG has been shot through with a “culture of paranoia” that stems straight from the owner's box. His first target was the media. Knicks beat reporters were treated like an invading army—one that needed to be contained and spied on. By the early 2000s, an MSG PR flunky was present any time a reporter spoke to a player, jotting down every word and funneling the transcripts straight to Dolan’s mitts.
“They came running over like the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with their fingers on their earpieces,”
Beat writers said it didn’t stop there. Some claimed MSG goons tailed them outside the Garden, and “enemies lists” of unfriendly scribes were passed around. Former New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro put it bluntly: “It’s the gulag.”
(When I reported on MSG's antagonistic relationship with the press in 2014, I included a few background quotes. One reporter told me MSG PR reached out to them minutes after the story’s publication, demanding they give up my source.)
The tools were a lot clumsier back then, but that didn’t stop Dolan. Famously, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Garnett got into a heated on-court beef. The jawing continued after the final buzzer, with Melo shouting at the Celtics’ team bus in the parking lot. Dolan responded by having guys with directional microphones sit courtside to record everything said by and to Anthony so he could peruse the tapes. Cablevision employees similarly accused Dolan of spying when they tried to organize their shop. So did Knicks staffers, who believed their phones were bugged.
Basketball fans were put in his crosshairs next. Dolan’s Knicks were a laughingstock until recently, and Knicks diehards responded by jeering and begging him to divest of ownership.
In 2015, a Knicks fan wrote a rude letter, and Dolan shot back, calling the fan a drunk (despite having zero evidence) and banning him. A stockbroker who heckled Anthony too vociferously was tossed out and arrested. Another fan told Dolan to sell as he was exiting the arena, and was confronted by the part-time bluesman who called the fan an “asshole.” Another fan implored him to sell in 2019, and was banned. And Charles Oakley, a Knicks legend, was dragged out of MSG by security, cuffed and smeared as a drunk—again without evidence.
By 2018, MSG was scanning the faces of its paying customers. It’s unclear when this practice started but by all accounts MSG was an industry leader. The NBA, for its part, waved Dolan through. Facial recognition, the league said, was just another way to keep everyone safe.
Dolan found reasons to unleash his new toy in ways outside the bounds of plausible security.
Kelly Conlon worked for a law firm which was representing a separate client in a slip-and-spill case at an MSG property. She and her nine-year-old daughter wanted to see the Rockettes in 2022, but she was ejected from Radio City Music Hall. The fact that Conlon had zero to do with the injury suit didn’t matter. Guards swarmed them within seconds, she said, knowing her name and resume, and citing MSG’s “attorney exclusion list.” The system had worked to perfection.
More stories of lawyers being tossed came to light. Another told the Post he had to comfort his crying seven-year old son after security pounced as if he were a real threat.
“They came running over like the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with their fingers on their earpieces,” the lawyer recalled. If you’re on Dolan’s list, the money spent on a ticket is gone. MSG venues don’t issue refunds.
Pushback
Those unhappy with Dolan running roughshod over New Yorkers' right to privacy have tried to fight back, but to little avail.
A 2023 class action suit alleged MSG profited from facial recognition tech by scaring off both current and future litigants. The case was dismissed in 2024. MSG’s practices might be “objectionable,” the judge ruled, but didn’t run afoul of New York City’s codes. Signs at MSG-run venues informing customers they may be scanned did the trick.
Some of the barred lawyers filed their own suit in 2023. The appeals court ruled in favor of MSG, though they did limit the ban to sporting events.
However, lawyer bans brought Dolan into conflict with the New York State Liquor Authority, and led him back to his tried-and-true, low-tech snooping methods.
State beverage laws require venues to admit the general public, including lawyers Dolan is pissed at, which risked Dolan losing the liquor licence, not just at MSG but all the varied properties the company controls.
The SLA notified MSG and enlisted a part time investigator, who grilled Dolan. Private dicks were hired to tail the ex-NYC cop for a hundred miles while he drove back to his home in Queens, then parked outside his abode and snapped photos.
“If there's somebody who is suing you and trying to put you out of business or take your money from you,” Dolan groused in a rare public appearance on Fox5’s morning show, Good Day New York, "you have a right to be, yes, a little unhappy about it.”
The SLA wasn’t spared, either. The MSG honcho smirked and held up a sheet of paper containing an SLA official’s name, face, and contact info. He then proceeded to unspool his clever ploy: Dolan would stop selling alcohol to thirsty patrons at an upcoming Rangers game, and any hockey fans upset at being cut off should harass the bureaucrat.
Not to be outdone, he later accused the SLA of being in cahoots with the banned lawyers, and sued the agency. The case was dismissed. For now, the company’s liquor license remains intact.
Who'll turn off the cameras?
If the courts couldn’t turn off the cameras, what about elected officials? New York Attorney General Letitia James launched an inquiry into MSG in early 2023. In a letter sent to Dolan, James argued New Yorkers’ civil rights were at risk, should the rampant face-scanning continue.
“Discrimination and retaliation against those who have petitioned the government for redress have no place in New York,” the letter stated. In response, Dolan eased up on some of the attorneys. James’s office did not respond to an interview request.
A slew of New York State and City representatives sponsored a bill in 2023 to halt MSG’s surveillance practices, but it hasn’t made it out of committee. The only way this will change is if residents demand Dolan honor their basic right to privacy, Adam Schwartz, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Groove.
“This is, I think, a moment for all of the fans, who go to Madison Square Garden and don't like what this spoiled rich kid is doing with his surveillance panopticon, to call their city council members and to call their state legislators,” Schwartz s.
It can be done. Schwartz highlighted an Illinois state law barring Dolan—or anyone—from snatching biometric data without consent at the MSG-run Chicago Theatre.
Gonzalez, one of the stalled 2023 bill’s sponsors, told The Groove she’s not going to abandon this issue.
“It's our responsibility to make sure that there are real guardrails to protect [New Yorkers] and protect their privacy,” she said.
Their fears aren’t confined to the privacy of New Yorkers. If Dolan can get away with this in the middle of Manhattan, while running one of the most well-known arenas in the world, what’s to stop other billionaires from doing the same in their fiefdoms? Every fan, every employee, every visitor everywhere risks being watched, tracked — judged—whether they like it or not.
The Knicks’ preseason tips off at noon today in Abu Dhabi.
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