Facial recognition tech gets woman booted from Rockettes show due to employer

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/face-recognition-tech-gets-girl-scout-mom-booted-from-rockettes-show-due-to-her-employer/4004677/

by 04rob • 4 years ago

715 649 4 years ago

nbcnewyork.com

MonkeyMalarky2• 4 years ago

A lawyer and a Rockettes show today, could be an angry tweeter and their tesla tomorrow or your Facebook post and a healthcare provider.

xdavidliu• 4 years ago

nit: transpose “Rockettes show” with “Lawyer” to get the correct parallel construction

MonkeyMalarky2• 4 years ago

Aha!

version_five• 4 years ago

Yes this was exactly my thought. Every day we hear about someone kicked off google without recourse, often because of an automated decision incorrectly made. How long until people are banned from public venues for the same reason?

For a long time now, governments have failed to modernize laws and regulations, and companies have stepped in with their own vigilante systems. We don't need more regulation, but we need updated standards for how technology like facial recognition can be aligned with previous norms and laws that came into existence when mass surveillance and communication tech didnt exist

phkahler• 4 years ago

> but we need updated standards for how technology like facial recognition can be aligned with previous norms and laws

Can we just make personal data collection and sharing illegal? We got by before this was even possible.

thesuitonym• 4 years ago

We don't need more regulation, but we need updated standards

Otherwise known as regulations. If it's just a standard that's not enforceable, companies will not comply.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 4 years ago

That is the ultimate goal of all facial recognition: to identify subversives and remove them from society.

mrexroad• 4 years ago

And don’t forget that facial recognition is only one tool for identifying individuals— gait recognition, clothing patterns, etc. are utilized as well.

vagabund• 4 years ago

As unsurprising as it is absurd if you're familiar with the petulant child that is James Dolan.

HDThoreaun• 4 years ago

Yea I think the bigger issue here is just that Dolan is an oligarch heir piece of shit and we need to rethink how inheritance works. The facial recognition stuff is an issue, but if dolan had to actually work for any of the stuff he's got I think he'd behave very differently.

Apocryphon4• 4 years ago

Hey, HN was just talking about him yesterday!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057496

defen2• 4 years ago

Radio City Music Hall is a private venue, they can ban or exclude anyone they want, as long as it's not due to membership in a protected class. You don't have a right to attend a Rockettes show, and if she doesn't like this policy she can start her own Christmas Spectacular show.

guerrilla4• 4 years ago

Why are you working against your own interest?

renewiltord• 4 years ago

Working against one's own interest because one believes in a higher principle is a good thing. It's what we call "being principled".

ProAm• 4 years ago

Except for the state provided liquor license they have that dictates differently.

ch4s33• 4 years ago

While in principle I'm inclined to agree, I'm not sure I want to live in a world where you might get yanked from a business after paying for entry because your employer is deemed to be adversarial. This has a nasty tinge of a cyberpunk dystopia. It fells at best illiberal, in the classical sense it like a kind of techno-mercantilism.

Orangeair• 4 years ago

What really bothers me here is that the lady wasn't even involved in a lawsuit against Radio City Music Hall, it just happens to be the case that they're connected through some billion dollar conglomerate to the restaurant that she's involved in litigation with.

Pissing off a mom and pop store and getting banned from that one location is one thing, but treading on the toe of an enormous corporation and being met with this just doesn't sit right with me.

fullshark4• 4 years ago

Well with advances in surveillance tech maybe we should rethink that general principle, as we have re: the protected class carve out you mention. You may be ok with this but how about excluding certain members due to low social credit scores? Or because they vote a certain way? Or because they said something mean on twitter about the owner? etc.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

similar to the legality of unpleasant speech .. a private venue does have the right to exclude because it is.. privately owned.

Instead of taking to the streets (or social media) in righteous anger, I suggest considering your economic support right now, of companies that build and operate societal surveillance machinery; that build and operate companies that rely on indentured servitude; companies that build and operate private shopping areas with pleasing music and eye-catching ads while paving the living earth and hiring private snoopers. worthy of scrutiny and operating widely today in your town, no?

monocasa3• 4 years ago

I mean, taking the article at face value (which, albeit, can be a bit of a leap sometimes), they've had both a court order to stop this practice and it's out of compliance with other regulations to ban these individuals.

kodyo2• 4 years ago

Amen. Parallel industries will spring up to serve those disenfranchised from establishment dystopian nonsense, and the ongoing ideological self-segregation will accelerate.

Best of all possible outcomes.

rurp2• 4 years ago

I wouldn't be so sure of this. There are countless examples of businesses applying gross discrimination practices for generations, and only stopping when forced to by the government.

Apocryphon4• 4 years ago

Parallel industries are hard to spring up when, as mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, entrenched oligopolies like MSGE and Live Nation buy up all of the independent venues. Unchecked corporate interests are the biggest enemies to free market competition and capitalism.

indymike2• 4 years ago

Radio City Music Hall is a private venue, they can ban or exclude anyone they want, as long as it's not due to membership in a protected class.

There are a ton of laws preventing this behavior by venues. Basically if you sell tickets to the public, you HAVE to let the ticket holders in, barring bad behavior at the gate or contraband. The idea that something is private means you can do whatever you want is very naive.

if she doesn't like this policy she can start her own Christmas Spectacular show.

She can also just sue and demand hearings about licenses that further prevent this kind of behavior (i.e. public venue, hospitality, zoning, liquor, food and beverage, etc...). From a social/business standpoint, punishing lawyers for working for an opposing firm is very small minded.

Also facial recognition telling gate agents who a member of the public works for is scummy.

monksy23• 4 years ago

MSG Certainly does not abide by that.("you have to let ticket holders in")

I was banned entry [Chicago Theater] (not formally but at the door which was weird as that I was not trying to progress in) for refusing to encase my phone in the yonder pouch. Once denied, I requested a full refund of my ticket. I don't recall having the notice when I bought the ticket and the the ticket didn't state the phone casing. (This was chris rock)

analog312• 4 years ago

It's a corporation, which blurs the notion of what it means to be "private." To assert its rights as a private entity, the venue could restructure itself as a Sole Proprietorship or Partnership.

dragonwriter6• 4 years ago

It’s a corporation, which blurs the notion of what it means to be “private.”

Legally, under established precedent, it does not, though a legal doctrine that as creations of the state through law corporations are bound by the same due process and equal protection rules that would affect all other state organs would be interesting, as would the corollary that foreign corporations, as creations of foreign states, are arms of their governments, and that their agents, including employees and domestic subsidiaries and their employees, are agents of foreign governments subject to all the rules and restrictions applicable thereto would be interesting.

dragonwriter6• 4 years ago

Radio City Music Hall is a private venue, they can ban or exclude anyone they want

I don’t think anyone is arguing that this is outside of their legal rights.

Things can be undesirable without being illegal, and just as MSG can legally punish this lawyer for distant connection to a lawsuit against them without violating the law, other people can note the behavior, criticize it, and even punish MSG for it in their business relations without violating the law.

RC_ITR6• 4 years ago

You are forgetting that they have the right to not sell tickets to whomever they choose, but once that ticket is sold, they are on very shaky ground to ban someone unless they misrepresented who they were when buying the ticket.

Tickets are contracts!

How can they prove this isn’t some bogus way to account for oversold seats? What if an airline did the same on oversold flights?

defen2• 4 years ago

they are on very shaky ground to ban someone unless they misrepresented who they were when buying the ticket.

Then I suppose it will come down to whether the ticket terms included a clause that the purchaser/attendee was not employed by a firm involved in a lawsuit against MSGE.

monksy23• 4 years ago

Nope they always have a clause stating that they can remove you from the venue for what ever reason they want.

Ticket master also has anti-chargeback clauses as well.

mannykannot2• 4 years ago

"A spokesperson for MSG reiterated in a statement that safety is their highest priority and that facial recognition is just one of the methods they use. MSG Entertainment also said it is confident their policy is in compliance with all applicable laws, including the New York State Liquor Authority."

Why do spokespersons frequently speak in non-sequiturs? They simply underline the absence of any good argument. I hope it isn't because many people don't realize this, though I fear it might be so.

I also hope the second sentence will turn out to be as logically incoherent as the first.

voidmain0001• 4 years ago

This explains why MSG called out the NYSLA - https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/12/07/madis...

mannykannot2• 4 years ago

Thanks for the link.

Notice that there is no claim here that it is a safety issue.

If MSG fears certain employees may reveal things it does not want known, it should constrain those employees from contact with the public within its venues.

jerf2• 4 years ago

Because it works. Human brains are fairly bad at detecting non sequiturs. Even with practice it is still hard, because the brain does not want to activate the expensive rational thought system unless there is a good reason. If you can get it to activate that expensive system, it is often then easy to see through, but that is a tall bar.

pessimizer3• 4 years ago

Human brains are fairly bad at detecting non sequiturs.

I think it's more that we automatically try to fix them. If you asked somebody to recall and reproduce those sentences after reading them, they would unconsciously add information to what they recalled until it turned into a reasonable defense.

robocat2• 4 years ago

second sentence will turn out to be as logically incoherent as the first

The key part of the second sentence: they are confident. Tricky to argue just how confident they are.

gedy• 4 years ago

I morbidly enjoy this idea, but only as an extreme form of tort reform.

hnuser8472• 4 years ago

TL;DR A personal injury lawyer ("in a wreck, need a check?") was banned from an attending a show. She attended anyway and was asked to leave. Computers were involved.

mcphage• 4 years ago

was banned from an attending a show.

Weird that they still sold her a ticket, though.

patja• 4 years ago

It is possible that the tickets were bought by someone else for the group without individually assigned names.

habibur• 4 years ago

Employee - Employer is here a lawyer based on the law firm. Before you click the title and waste your time.

worik2• 4 years ago

Do lawyers have fewer human rights?

itronitron• 4 years ago

This is a service I think some parents would be eager to sign up for, although since the woman kicked out was chaperoning a school field trip it seems like poor judgment on the part of MSG.

irrational• 4 years ago

It’s un-American to do this.

This seems like a very American thing to do all of this. The lawsuit, the facial recognition, the counter lawsuit. So very American.

rrdharan• 4 years ago

Actually it sounds very European to me - banning known hooligans from soccer stadiums?

https://www.wired.com/story/soccer-world-cup-biometric-surve...

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/26/15435620/champions-league...

KptMarchewa4• 4 years ago

You don't need any facial recognition for that, just get their ID to check if they are not banned while selling them tickets.

_visgean• 4 years ago

they are banning them because they have already caused trouble in similar situation. This is very different, she is being banned even though there is no indication that she would be security threat.

dang• 4 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing we need here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vleon422• 4 years ago

I am torn actually unsure on what would be morally correct:

1. I, as an individual, am allowed to deny entry to persons I dislike from my private property.

2. I, as an individual, am allowed to deny entry to persons affiliated with a business I dislike from my private property.

3. I, as a business owner (eg: a restaurant), am allowed to deny entry to persons I dislike (eg: a previous patron who was violent) from my business.

4. I, as a business owner (eg: a restaurant), should I not be allowed to deny entry to persons affiliated with a business I dislike (eg: the next door restaurant employee who is copying my menu) from my business?

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

The less dramatic version of 2 is a bouncer saying "no, you're friends with Bob, and Bob always causes trouble."

CaptainZapp• 4 years ago

Except that you're not standing in the queue to be processed by the bouncer, but you have a valid ticket, which they sold to you.

advisedwang5• 4 years ago

Your totally ignore the key element here: a new technology is allowing denying entry at a whole new scale. Nobody really has an objection to organization blocking a single individual who is might cause trouble. But blocking an entire class of people is a) newly enabled* and b) much more harmful to society.

If a venue kicked out a lawyer who was actively working on a lawsuit against the venue, nobody would bat an eye. But kicking out every person on payroll at any firm that has a lawsuit against any venue in the parent company, the scale has now transformed this into a different thing.

The next step people worry about is that this same technology could be applied to more than just busniess you dislike. Why not block people who have disparaged your business on social media? Why not block people with poor credit scores or a criminal history?

So you could draw a line between (3) and (4), but you should also be adding

5. I, as a business owner, should I not be allowed to invent new ways to deny entry to entire categories of people.

* obviously blocking people on visual characteristics like skin color is already possible. And that is widely regarded as unacceptable!

vleon422• 4 years ago

Thanks, makes a lot of sense

hnuser8472• 4 years ago

Your totally ignore the key element here: a new technology is allowing denying entry at a whole new scale. Nobody really has an objection to organization blocking a single individual who is might cause trouble. But blocking an entire class of people is a) newly enabled* and b) much more harmful to society.

So you're okay with the principle of denying individuals entry to a private business, but you're NOT okay with businesses enforcing this with technology? How does that make any sense?

stickfigure• 4 years ago

Who cares what technology they use? They could also check ids at the door and cross-reference their naughty list. Everything seems to involve an id check these days.

Maybe there's some contractual issue here - they sold you a ticket, that establishes a contract, they're breaking the contract by denying you entry. They should have performed the naughty check earlier in the process?

I think it's all pretty stupid but occupation isn't a protected class.

scintill76• 4 years ago

Reminiscent of how things like license plate readers are legal, but maybe only because the legislators didn’t imagine a day when every person could be surveilled constantly, retroactively, everywhere.

xwdv• 4 years ago

It has not transformed into a different thing. It is the same thing it was before. A person can deny someone access to their private property. The law is not “A person can deny people access to their private property but only in slow inefficient ways…”

What if it was an inverse, say you could only enter a business if you are a member of X group? Now most of the planet is banned from your property except a small group of people that qualify for X, where X could be as specific as “straight white males”.

It seems to me, some people just want the idea of the law but not the enforcement of it. Probably for their own self interests, mainly: getting access to someone else’s cool private property.

theLiminator• 4 years ago

Imo it's fine if they can explain why and they're not discriminating against a protected class (or one that should morally be protected).

Obviously this woman should get her money back, and imo they should comp her for the pain/expense related to arranging her schedule/travel/lodging around this show since she wasn't denied at point of sale.

baandang2• 4 years ago

I just picture someone worrying about people dialing phone numbers while driving in the car in 1990? What a stupid thing to worry about since obviously the cord won't be long enough.

People aren't going to want to have a phone on them at all times anyway and risk possibly breaking or losing the phone. It will just hang on the wall like the rotary phone in a stand so you know where it is but you won't have to worry about the pesky cord anymore.

Technological progress is a linear process that is always good with zero higher order cultural effects based on how new features are used in practice.

Face recognition? What could possibly go wrong. I recognize faces literally every day!

ejb9992• 4 years ago

>Your totally ignore the key element here: a new technology is allowing denying entry at a whole new scale

I actually don't see that as the key element at all - Doing something that is already legal, faster, doesn't make it illegal does it?

briffle2• 4 years ago

I can't help but wonder how they got the pictures of all the employees from this law firm? Perhaps headshots on the 'about us' section of the web site? I can't wait to see yet more legal disclaimers added to everything...

MisterBastahrd2• 4 years ago

But he isn't, though?

If I do not want X at my establishment, then what does it matter whether X is picked out of a single file line by a bouncer or picked out of a crowd by a security camera? I don't want them there. In what manner they showed up is irrelevant to me.

And you're comparing apples and oranges. This is a specific person who is a lawyer for a firm which is actively working against MSG, not some nebulous class of individual.

Jiro3• 4 years ago

Your totally ignore the key element here: a new technology is allowing denying entry at a whole new scale.

What's your opinion about Facebook or Twitter blocking people? I'm pretty sure they block people using computer technologies, and that these technologies let them do it at scale.

TheHappyOddish2• 4 years ago

The technology is just means to an end. Would you be ok if security had a big wall with printed pictures of undesirables and kicked her out due to this?

nextlevelwizard2• 4 years ago

Why not block people with [...] a criminal history?

Would be interesting to see the future where (almost) every business would refuse to deal with anyone with criminal record. Would we see lower crime rates if getting caught meant you basically couldn't function in society anymore? Or would that just spiral people who get a speeding ticket into mugging people for their groceries?

cortesoft• 4 years ago

In the US, at least, there are restrictions on 3. You can’t deny entry to black people, for example, just because you don’t like black people.

HarryHirsch• 4 years ago

You can, however, deny employment to Dalits, and Oracle argues that it's Just Fine because there's no law.

btilly2• 4 years ago

The restrictions in question come from the Civil Rights Act. Which sets a bunch of protected classes, including race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

See https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-196....

However federal law does not prevent discriminating on other grounds. Such as political affiliation or profession. For example landlords can choose not to rent to lawyers, and every so often someone gets fired for political views.

State law may disagree. And her liquor license trick is an example of how.

int_19h3• 4 years ago

It's more complicated than that. You can't deny entry to black people as a public venue. But you can set up a members-only club that does not allow black people to be members, and then sell exclusively to the membership - which is still a business.

KptMarchewa4• 4 years ago

Change "dislike" to "actively works against you".

TomK322• 4 years ago

But, even if she did work on cases again the company, would attending an event have to do anything with the court disputes?

pixl976• 4 years ago

Eh, I take that as a very bad take.

Lawyers work for their clients, and in the vast majority of cases are not personally invested deeply in the case (except when you do dumb crap like in the article). They request evidence via the court, they do not go gather it themselves. If further on site evidence is needed by non-standard methods a PI will show up at the location, and if they are any good will never be noticed. By banning the lawyers they are either petty, or they feel they are still involved in some kind of potentially illegal activity and need to reduce risk. Not a good look.

guerrilla4• 4 years ago

This is less of a problem if when public places aren't private property, but we still have the second part of the problem: can one be forced to do business with someone one doesn't want to. It seems like in this case, she was already sold a ticket, so that seems to be a moot point on this particular case.

throwaway5752• 4 years ago

Your premise is a little off. This is not exactly private property, but a public accommodation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations_in_the_U.... That is why MSG likely has to meet ADA accessibility construction standards, among other things. Different laws apply when you invite the general public into your property.

The law is like code. If you say, "persons I dislike" but you mean people of color, you have Jim Crow, which is deeply immoral. On they other hand, your point #3 is clearly valid. To resolve this, 42 U.S.C. §2000a talks about protected classes (https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ii-civil-rights-act-public...). People with good and bad intentions have been arguing ever since then about what is a public accommodation and who belongs to protected classes. In this case, even if it's legal, MSG is not being terribly smart to 1) use dystopian technology to enforce bans 2) be petty and expansive about banning people 3) do so against a now-very-angry legal expert.

throw_a_grenade2• 4 years ago

They shouldn't have taken legal obligations to do otherwise, i.e. they shouldn't have sold the ticket and shouldn't have applied for liquor permit.

"Yes, we took your cash in return for promise of delivering goods and services, but our policy forbids us from delivering" sounds more like Rule of Acquisition.

rtkwe4• 4 years ago

Given she was there with a Girl Scouts troop she probably hadn't given her name to MSG and the tickets were probably bought as a large group. Also do we know if they refunded the ticket I don't remember seeing that said either way when I read it.

reaperducer3• 4 years ago

I, as a business owner (eg: a restaurant), am allowed to deny entry to persons I dislike (eg: a previous patron who was violent) from my business.

Actually, no. At least in New York State. While you can ban someone for the "violent" offense you picked, you cannot "deny entry to persons [you] dislike."

The victim in this case, being a lawyer, is taking the clever and lawyerly route with this:

Davis is now upping the legal ante, challenging MSG’s license with the State Liquor Authority.

"The liquor license that MSG got requires them to admit members of the public, unless there are people who would be disruptive who constitute a security threat," said Davis.

rootusrootus4• 4 years ago

being a lawyer

That's the thing that gets me. I get the desire to retaliate against people you feel have wronged you somehow, but as an actual strategy it seems like playing games like this with lawyers invites more trouble than it's worth. If they're trying to collect evidence, they will just send in an uninvolved third party to do it, not go themselves. But by attacking them personally, now they're going to use their legal skills to give you a headache.

DaveExeter• 4 years ago

you cannot "deny entry to persons [you] dislike."

I think that's 100% legal, even in NYS. You can't deny entry based upon membership in a protected class, but other than that, you can't be forced to serve someone!

0xdeadbeefbabe• 4 years ago

5. Block people who are likely to have a medical emergency at your business.

crazygringo4• 4 years ago

In terms of morality (as opposed to current law), I would argue #1 and #2 should be legally permitted, while #3 is inconsistent and #4 should not be permitted.

Basically, as an individual regarding your private property you have total control to discriminate freely. That's individual freedom. You're allowed to choose your own guests. (Note that if you're renting a room though, that becomes a business, so this no longer applies.)

Regarding #3, as a business owner, it's necessary to create policies to be able to ban individuals based on their relevant reasons that is set as policy, which includes past demonstrated misbehavior (e.g. violence). But not because you "dislike" them. Feelings don't matter, only relevant (non-arbitrary) policies do.

Similarly for #4, again feelings don't matter. No, a business should not be able to discriminate against people who work for or own competitors. (You can ban taking photos however, since that applies to everyone.)

Basically this is all predicated on a slippery-slope argument -- as soon as you allow bans for arbitrary "dislikes" rather than "relevant reasons", you're opening it up to racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. That's the immoral part. People's desire for equal accomodation from a business strongly outweighs a business owner's "dislikes", especially as a business owner is often the exclusive one providing a certain good in a certain area.

And so this case, I would strongly argue that banning employees of a law firm which is suing you from purchasing entertainment tickets is immoral. It's ultimately no different from a Democrat-owned business banning Republicans. It's nothing more than a "dislike".

JackFr3• 4 years ago

Dislike has nothing to do with it.

You’re suing my restaurant because you claim a patron of mine was over served by a bartender and subsequently killed someone while driving drunk.

I do not want your lawyers or their investigators or staff coming in and chatting with my staff or poking around my business without my lawyer being there.

kstrauser12• 4 years ago

#4 could (and almost certainly would) be used for broadly awful reasons. For example, “I’m not discriminating against minorities! I just don’t want to serve anyone who’s worked in a chicken processing plant.”

worik2• 4 years ago

1. I, as an individual, am allowed to deny entry to persons I dislike from my private property.

If you were not letting other, strangers, in for money. (Unsure if "for money" matters) then you are not, or should not, be so allowed.

If you are in trade than (in civilised jurisdictions) you cannot refuse to trade with a person because of prejudice and/or bigotry.

xapata2• 4 years ago

The difference is the scale of the Madison Square Gardens business. You could argue that they have a sort of monopoly power that holds them to a different standard than the typical business.

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

IMO, your right to deny people entry to your private property should end once you take their money for tickets to enter. After all, it's not like she bought her ticket under a fake name.

TheJoeMan• 4 years ago

This is an important distinction with “deny access to business”. They already took her money, now they’re denying their end of the contract.

s1artibartfast7• 4 years ago

What if you didn't take their money and they bought a ticket via 3rd party, as is often the case?

HWR_142• 4 years ago

It should be noted that (3) is not true. You cannot deny entry to black people because you are a racist, for instance. You can deny someone who was previously violent, for the violence. Not because you dislike them.

This is similar to

5. I, as a government, can lock up people who engage in behaviors I dislike (e.g. because they were violent.)

6. I, as a government, can lock up people who are affiliated with groups I dislike (e.g. political groups not in power)

HD103720b• 4 years ago

To me its pretty straight forward because this is how social credit systems start.

This is a slippery slope.

Facial recognition matched with digital currencies is a real serious problem.

himinlomax3• 4 years ago

Another take: personal information is valuable, it belongs to the individual concerned with some fair use exceptions, making electronic files with said personal information in a way that obviously harms the individuals concerned infringes on their most personal intellectual property and is not fair use.

rtkwe4• 4 years ago

Facts however are not generally protected though which is what most of this is about. That's why map makers include non-existent cities so there's something other than just facts involved in their product.

tqi2• 4 years ago

I think if a business is the beneficiary of a number of public subsidizes and allowances, then they lose a lot of that discretion.

tootie• 4 years ago

Honestly I think the biggest free speech issue is their grounds for excluding her. And perhaps a violation of the 4th amendment too. Not because of cataloging her face but by abusing their authority to retaliate against people for exercising due process. What if law firms struggle to hire for fear of being blacklisted for indirectly participating in lawsuits? It will make it that much harder to seek redress in courts.

rapht• 4 years ago

Your private property is what it is, private.

Your business place, assuming a public business, is indeed that: a place open to the public by default.

In France (and, as far as I'm aware, most European countries), there is a very clear line: either your business place welcomes the general public, or it does not.

Once you fall in the first category - and, as soon as you're selling something in that business place, you are in that category - then you must have very strong arguments if you refuse to let a prospective customer in or even if you refuse to sell to a particular person the products or services that it is the purpose of your business to sell.

Those arguments usually boil down to either (i) some law preventing you to sell something to that prospective customer or (ii) that prospective customer actively disturbing the public order or presenting a high risk thereof (eg: they're a thief, they're drunk, they can't prove that they will be able to pay, ...). Of course there are provisions for specific settings, but which merely soften the (ii) to allow filtering on public safety grounds for places welcoming more than X simultaneous guests - including eg nightclubs and such.

Anything not in falling into these exceptions is just what it is: discrimination. And actually, this seems very sound to me. The fact you own a business puts you in the public world: you may not refuse to serve someone because you don't like them.

ryandrake3• 4 years ago

Running a business doesn't magically turn your place of business into public property. I run a home business. Does that mean the general public are free to enter and roam around my home office?

In the USA at least, you can kick out or ban anyone you want from your business for any reason, unless it is one of a very small enumerated list of disallowed reasons including race, religion and so on. If I don't want people wearing green shirts in my store I can kick/keep them out. I'd be an asshole, but I am 100% allowed to do that.

nashashmi2• 4 years ago

No, you should not be allowed as a business to deny entry, or deny service, or deny product to a person/entity you do not "like" or a person who is associated with someone/entity you do not "like".

If you removed a person from your business because of something they did, then denying them subsequent business is an extreme measure and will most likely not hold unless there is language in laws that you can use, like violent activity, criminal behavior, etc.

cryptonector2• 4 years ago

We don't allow public accomodations to discriminate against protected classes. We have made a decision that some kinds of discrimination is immoral, and rightly so. As it gets easier to make discriminatory decisions on objectionable basis, we may well decide that to expand this rule.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

Interesting. I think she knows she has no case, but realized her eviction put them in violation of their liquor license, fighting back where it really hurt. Banning lawyers might not be the best idea.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

The problem is that her eviction has no case, so might as well weaponize the liquor license to arrive at a similar outcome. They got Capone on tax evasion. Picking a fight with sophisticated legal practitioners seems…poorly thought out?

High level, perhaps private venues shouldn’t be able to ban someone from a venue simply because of who employs them? Perhaps craft the legislation around annual patrons served.

BizarroLand3• 4 years ago

I am not sure why you would say that she has no case. On the one hand, it's a common understanding that businesses can bar anyone from their premises for any reason, and that would be the normal interpretation of this issue, but in this circumstance, the lawyer does have a legitimate response in that they have agreed to waive that authority in exchange for the permission to serve alcohol on premises.

On the other hand, they sold her a ticket to a show and then unilaterally voided that ticket without warning based on something that had only the smallest connection to her, which could be considered retaliation against the law firm that is handling the case.

There isn't any doubt about the facts of the case, the only question is how will a judge and jury allocate fault and responsibility.

That's a really good case for any competent lawyer and I'm pretty sure their legal team is not very happy right now.

gregors2• 4 years ago

When you say "can bar anyone from their premises for any reason" I don't think you've fully thought that out. Can I ban you from attending based on race? That answer is no, I cannot. Why? Because that is a protected status. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a good thing.

rootusrootus4• 4 years ago

That's a really good case for any competent lawyer and I'm pretty sure their legal team is not very happy right now.

I'm surprised that the policy of banning litigating lawyers ever passed their legal department to begin with. It's just inviting a guaranteed headache without providing any additional legal advantage.

areyousure• 4 years ago

There might be another angle to this.

The law firm's previous personal injury lawsuits against MSG were because they served alcohol to someone who later drove drunk. Multiple lawsuits were successful, in one case getting $20 million.

In general they appear to represent drunk driving victims and associate with MADD.

happytoexplain• 4 years ago

MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved.

While it's reasonable to disagree with this policy, it's not really related to social dystopia, so I think it's dramatic to lament this in the vein of "today it's this, tomorrow it will be getting banned due to Tweeting about your politics", or whatever. I mean, yes, that may happen, but the only thing concerning about this case is the tech itself, and not necessarily the rationale under which it was deployed.

dragonwriter6• 4 years ago

While it’s reasonable to disagree with this policy, it’s not really related to social dystopia […] While it’s reasonable to disagree with this policy, it’s not really related to social politics, so I think it’s dramatic to lament this in the vein of “today it’s this, tomorrow it will be getting banned due to Tweeting about your politics”, or whatever. I mean, yes, that may happen, but the only thing concerning about this case is the tech itself

Tolerance for use of the technology without restrictions is, arguably, a way in which this relates to social dystopia.

Technology doesn’t do anything on its own; people using it (and other people allowing other people to use it) in certain ways is always social.

ch4s33• 4 years ago

Jumping from "attorneys pursuing active litigation" to anyone working with such persons, and from "litigation against the Company" to "any ongoing litigation against subsidiaries despite date of purchase or litigation" makes it far from clear. Also selling the ticket despite such a "straightforward policy" seems like it may bring up a tricky contract issue.

kuschku• 4 years ago

It becomes a social dystopia when it's not just "you're banned from places you're suing" but "you're banned from places in half the country because they're all actually just owned by the same company"

tedd4u• 4 years ago

How do you suppose they got her photo (and associated it with her identity)? Is there someone at MSG (or their facial recognition vendor) whose job it is to look her up on Facebook (Or her employer’s “about” page)?

lavishlatern• 4 years ago

Common practice for the websites of law firms (and some other fields like private equity) to have the headshots of all employees on their website with job title and description in a nice table.

Example of a different firm where you can even filter by school: https://www.wlrk.com/attorneys/?asf_l=View%20All

unreal372• 4 years ago

Probably she is associated with that firm on LinkedIn... It's not easy to imagine how someone gets a database of photos of employees of a law firm.

I'd bet she self-identified as being an employee and posted to social media about it.

yieldcrv2• 4 years ago

One angle is the liquor license

Another angle is their insurer

Another angle is their payment processor

You can likely get them back into community expectations

monksy23• 4 years ago

Probably could go criminal with fraud. They sold a ticket that they did not intend to honor, and the person is not able to get their money back.

yieldcrv2• 4 years ago

Now two law firms and the entire New York public sector cant get in!

sneak2• 4 years ago

Covid is still around. Always wear your mask in public.

Don't show ID unless it's a cop demanding it (when it's legally required). Private parties can't demand ID. Don't give ID for routine transactions. Practice saying no to routine demands for your papers.

It doesn't improve unless a lot of us start ending the transactions.

eouwt• 4 years ago

It's not uncommon for the T&Cs of tickets and such to require photo ID...in which case?

xoa2• 4 years ago

Private parties can't demand ID.

What? Can you cite any laws legally barring people for requiring ID for a business transaction or to access private property? I've honestly never heard of such a thing. Obviously if a private person says "I want to see your ID for access or before completing this transaction" you may legally refuse, and they cannot arrest you or anything. But they can then in turn refuse to complete the transaction.

sneak2• 4 years ago

You've no right to access private property even with ID, as TFA illustrates. ID or no ID, the private property owner can eject you if they wish (unless their ejection is based solely on your membership in a protected class).

I'm not sure where your question comes from. Of course any private property owner can reject you for any reason, including failure to ID. But that's nothing to do with ID.

bewaretheirs2• 4 years ago

Many organizations (including the Girl Scouts) have required chaperone-to-kid ratios for trips like this.

Booting one chaperone from a trip could put the entire party out of compliance with the organization's policy and require exclusion of some fraction of the group or possibly cancellation of the trip.

Typical Girl Scout policy here:

https://www.gsnorcal.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gsnorcal/doc...

(Note the requirement that at least one chaperone be female and at least two of the chaperones be unrelated, and note that if you have to split the girls you probably need to send a minimum of two chaperones with each half..)

s1artibartfast7• 4 years ago

Maybe the girlscouts should set up facial recognition for their troop events to identify and blacklist policy violators.

monksy23• 4 years ago

So I have been rejected and "banned" from a MSG venue. It's not fun, and it has nothing to do with your behavior.

It was at the Chicago Theather and it was the Chris Rock show back in 2017. I bought the ticket, I don't believe that it had any special restrictions [this was a long time ago], the ticket had no indications about the "phoneless"/phone encasing demand. The event page didn't say anything about this. However they were trying to force this. I refused

Why did I refuse? The Bataclan attack* happened less than 2 years before this and mobile phones did [it was reported at the time] help people communicate for help and escape. This is a big venue, and I certainly don't trust a venue who doesn't trust their ushers who can't get people to stop filming. Think they're going to know how to call the cops/handle an emergergcy? lol.

What happened? Since I was denied, I asked for a refund from the venue. The main security guard corralled me against the wall, waited for the manager, the manager argued with me and refused refund [even despite the ticket saying nothing about this, their overall policy said nothing about this [I checked to see if I could bring my small camera with me]], when the manager left to get an artist rep she felt the need to "ban me" to another security guard, they got a "artist rep" trying to argue against me using "well this is the artist's preference". (Why they brought out the stupid artist rep is beyond me)

Ultimately I lost that 80$ and will shit talk Chris Rock, any venue, and any artist who uses the yondr device.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks

moloch-hai• 4 years ago

This sort of thing, everywhere, is exactly what to expect from "deregulation".

justanorherhack• 4 years ago

Yes and if enough people actually thought about it and cared then they wouldnt participate and the market would change. But instead just like with regulation they don't care. It's just one is forced and one is a choice.

notinfuriated• 4 years ago

I'm unclear on how this is a regulation or deregulation thing. There could be a regulation that specifically allows for or denies smartphones at such events. It's hypothetical at this point, so why is deregulation to blame in this case now?

pessimizer3• 4 years ago

A venue can dictate how you dress and behave, but can't dictate that you not carry in a cellphone?

Not clearly telling someone with anxiety that their (very common) safety blanket isn't allowed in the venue before they buy the ticket it a problem, but it's a problem with how we treat Terms-of-Service and EULAs that are too long and legalistic as binding. It's good that people can't have their cellphones at comedy shows.

raldi• 4 years ago

What was the phone requirement that you refused? Did they want to confiscate your phone, lock it in a bag you physically couldn’t open, seal it in an envelope you got to keep but could open in an emergency, just demand you keep it in your pocket…?

andybak• 4 years ago

Yeah. I've never heard of this and "phoneless/phone encasing" isn't returning much.

GP - what?

vidanay• 4 years ago

My guess would be "no phone allowed."

(Specifically, no video recording allowed, but most enforcement is too stupid so they have a blanket restriction.)

monocasa3• 4 years ago

The yondr bags are sealed faraday cages to keep you from recording the show or being on your phone.

chroma• 4 years ago

I guarantee that you clicked through some terms and conditions while buying that ticket, and it almost certainly said that phones weren't allowed. This is quite common at comedy shows because comedians develop their material over time. They don't want clips of jokes failing to land or being taken out of context, as that could hurt their career. Recording also emboldens hecklers, as one friend can record (or even livestream) while another insults the performer.

crazygringo4• 4 years ago

Back in 2017 it wasn't that common yet. I think Yondr is a great solution for comedians, but can also totally see that it wouldn't have made it into terms and conditions yet. I don't think you can guarantee anything in this case unless you have the actual T&C from that particular show.

monksy23• 4 years ago

This has been a long time ago, it's possible, I know the show description at the time of purchase didn't mention it, the ticket didn't mention it and the venue policy didn't mention anything about this. Ticketmaster after the fact didn't state there were any additional T&Cs attached to the ticket.

15155• 4 years ago

How does Yondr prevent recording? Why is my phone not recording inside the pouch?

rmorey• 4 years ago

I’ve gone to several comedy shows (5 or so?) that use the Yondr bags, and honestly I think they’re a pretty good solution. I think it’s fair for artists and comedians to want to prevent filming, and the phone jail thing is quite clever, actually. The bags are not indestructible, it seems like a sharp pair of scissors or a knife would get you in. And I think the magnet lock is actually bypassable otherwise. It’s just inconvenient enough that everyone pretty much just complies, while retaining physical possession of their phone. I kinda like the experience as an audience member, I think the phone thing does keep the audience more engaged with the show. I’m open to arguments against, but as it stands I find the phone jail charming

monksy23• 4 years ago

I fully respect your preference there. I'm also glad we can have a civil agreement/disagreement about this.

it seems like a sharp pair of scissors or a knife would get you in

You have neither of those during the time of an emergency. They've already taken those things away at the door with the metal detector.

They do "have an area where you can unlock it" however it's a restricted area.. and not much of a use during an emergency.

It’s just inconvenient enough that everyone pretty much just complies

I feel like that's why it's gotten so far as it has.

namuol• 4 years ago

Yeesh. This whole thing sounds like some gross commercialization of a problem blown out of proportion, that doesn’t really work, hurts honest customers, and only gets enforced due to some sunk cost fallacy going on in the minds of the venues/entertainers that were duped into using this “product” by the IP attorneys that are throwing bad ideas out there to justify the size of their salaries. I have no doubt the same sort of thing is going on with the linked article, only it’s a different branch of the legal team involved this time.

the__alchemist• 4 years ago

Credit card chargeback.

monksy23• 4 years ago

That would have invalidated my other tickets held by Ticketmaster. I think I held a Metallica ticket at the time. (Metallica let me into solder field with a Lecia Lumix LX10)

andsoitis• 4 years ago

ushers who can't get people to stop filming.

Not only is it a numbers game (too many people to police), it is also very annoying for other patrons when people are constantly told to stop.

So banning the phones is a great solution that solves a number of problems.

Think they're going to know how to call the cops/handle an emergergcy? lol.

Of course they do.

I really don’t think you rationale for refusing to hand over your phone holds up.

elmomle• 4 years ago

While I am fine with bans on phones for performances, I too would absolutely bristle and feel strongly inclined to complain if that was not made clear at the time I bought a ticket.

ezfe2• 4 years ago

If they actually kicked people out, not just say "please put your phone away" people would learn it's not okay. The only reason people do it is because they don't think they'll get in trouble.

vorpalhex3• 4 years ago

The yondr device looks like it could be defeated with a magnet or a sharp knife.

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

Places that use Yondr also make you go through airport-like security and won't allow either of those things in.

BeFlatXIII2• 4 years ago

Ultimately I lost that 80$

Why didn't you chargeback for services not received?

ipaddr2• 4 years ago

Facial recognition by private entities used to police a public venue should be restricted or outlawed

jmbwell• 4 years ago

Agreed, but what should we do when the "public venue" is owned and controlled by a private entity?

The more we privatize, the more we allow to converge in the private hands of the wealthy few, the less recourse the "public" has.

MiddleEndian2• 4 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but there is a legal concept of businesses that are "open to the public" even if they are a privately owned.

tomatotomato37• 4 years ago

Everyone always goes for the discrimination angle, but what frightens me is that like other modern automated tech of this decade the facial recognition used here probably has a horrendous false positive rate which most institutions will none the less treat as the final truth. Unrelated this is also why I fear most of this new AI stuff so much despite working in the field; the accuracy rates on these things in production is atrocious.

lja2• 4 years ago

The false positive rate on quality facial recognition is actually very low. I'm not weighing in whether or not it is proper to always use it, just as someone that's deeply experienced in commercial applications of facial recognition.

idiocrat• 4 years ago

The low rate of false positives have been well documented in the Archibald Buttle vs Archibald Tuttle case.

And the government never makes mistakes.

Majromax• 4 years ago

The false positive rate on quality facial recognition is actually very low.

It depends on the purpose. For identity verification purposes, when you already have independent reason to suspect that someone is specifically Person X, then a "very low" false positive rate is likely sufficient.

For filtering, however, "very low" isn't enough. Suppose your facial recognition system has a 0.001% false positive rate (one per 100k), but you have a list of 1000 banned faces and your venue sees 10,000 visitors per night. You're making ten million comparisons, and that "very low" false positive rate will still result in 100 false matches.

That could still be okay, if a match just involves (here) pulling the patron aside for an ID verification. Asking 100 people for ID is much more benign than turning 100 people away at the turnstile. MSG here did appear to follow the match with a secondary verification (per the article), but I shudder to think of all the venues that will hear "very low false positive rate" and not really think through the consequences.

monksy23• 4 years ago

It's not just that. It's the collection of updated face data that's a concern.

They're taking an image, segmenting out the face and they're improving an existing model for that individual. Super scary stuff that's going on. (Other than the fact that they have an existing image)

If she was in IL .. she should persue them with the BIPA act.

tomp• 4 years ago

They didn’t ban her on the basis of face recognition. She just got flagged by security, after which they asked for her ID and banned her on the basis of her real identity.

So the chance of false positives is minimal.

akira2501• 4 years ago

So.. what if she wasn't carrying ID? Now it's back to a judgement call, and I can bet I know which side the guards are going to err on.

mrguyorama2• 4 years ago

I give it a year before the venue fires the bouncer to pinch pennies and just relies on the facial scanner

berniedurfee6• 4 years ago

Is it legal for MSG security to show your ID? That in and of itself seems sketchy.

seany• 4 years ago

NIST actually does reports on vendors for this stuff publicly. https://pages.nist.gov/frvt/html/frvt1N.html

reaperducer3• 4 years ago

Up next: Everyone on HN who posted that they disagree with MSG's use of facial recognition is permabanned from all MSG venues, with no notice or recourse.

crmd2• 4 years ago

The legal rights of a corporation should rapidly decrease as it gains market power. My neighborhood bar should be allowed to 86 me for just about anything, but Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Ticketmaster, and Live Nation should not. Same thing with google and Amazon banning people from their platform for a single good faith credit card chargeback.

francisofascii2• 4 years ago

Unless your neighborhood bar is the only bar.

pixl976• 4 years ago

I mean, there are lots of other bars, so it's not really meaningful statement.

s1artibartfast7• 4 years ago

I don't think I agree. You don't have right to be served alcohol within convenient walking distance.

pfisherman• 4 years ago

This is a pretty interesting concept. I think way this is described as “fewer rights” is not precise enough to pass muster. But I agree with the principle that the harm to an individual resulting from a ban is proportional to its scale / reach.

For example, getting banned from all McDonald’s restaurants is qualitatively different from getting banned from one McDonald’s restaurant.

So how does one go about qualifying / quantifying (1) the potential risk or harm caused by an individual violating terms for service and (2) the harm caused to the individual resulting from corrective actions; and then balance the two against each other?

monksy23• 4 years ago

Consider your neighborhood bar may be under a group, i.e. hammock hospitality group.

jasmer• 4 years ago

Who the hell even thinks to do any of this? Why are people so stupid and petty?

I mean, I'm thankful to live in a place where we are too boring to even think of these kinds of shenanigans. We have our own but they are not as bad.

plusminusplus• 4 years ago

"we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment"

For discussion, let's take MSG's statement in good faith, and assume the attorney was notified twice.

Are there legitimate reasons to do this other than a "pretext for doing collective punishment on adversaries who would dare sue MSG" as suggested?

ezfe2• 4 years ago

I mean, I think it's standard operating procedure not to allow any interaction except through proper channels when there's litigation involved, and they can apply this here.

I don't think barring someone from your property is a good punishment against someone who is trying to sue you, since that kinda implies they "dislike" you already and wouldn't want to engage with you

azernik18• 4 years ago

All that is well and good for a plaintiff. But their lawyer? Or any other lawyer who works at the same firm? Nah, this is bananas.

MBCook• 4 years ago

We all know how this works. It’s perfectly legal until someone in congress is impacted, then legislation will suddenly appear about this “new horrible invasion of privacy”.

Similar to the video rental privacy act.

stickyricky• 4 years ago

Businesses which sell to the public should provide accommodation for the public. Bad actors should be handled by the legal system. When their sentence expires they should be allowed to re-enter the public spaces they previously disrupted. A private "legal system" administered by global conglomerates is totalitarianism by another form.

whoopdedo• 4 years ago

What does the Bar have to say about being a customer of a business you're suing. Wouldn't this be more of a concern for the law firm than the venue?

But I can see how this has a chilling effect if you can lose access to goods and services because you're taking legal action against the company. Reminds me of the story I heard, though I forget the details (or even if it was true), about someone retaining numerous law firms which made it nearly impossible to find a lawyer who could sue them without it being a conflict-of-interest.

vorpalhex3• 4 years ago

As someone not involved in the suit?

_trampeltier• 4 years ago

It was here on HN, but I also don't remember the details. I think it was like a big company had a relationship with almost all layers or something like this.

lscdlscd• 4 years ago

You might be thinking of the Sopranos:

SPOILER

When Tony and Carmine are getting divorced, Tony consults with every lawyer in town, creating a conflict of interest and not allowing Carmine to use them.

somebody78978• 4 years ago

*Carmella, not Carmine, lol. Carmine is another mob boss.

1123581321• 4 years ago

Also a plot point in Noah Baumbach's movie Marriage Story.

bee_rider• 4 years ago

Although — I’ve only seen this on, like, other online chitchats so take it with a heap of salt, but — I’m under the impression that the main thing accomplished if someone tried these sorts of antics in real life would be a reasonably pissed off judge with reason to believe that one party wasn’t engaging with the legal system in good faith.

rtkwe4• 4 years ago

She's only tangentially related not directly on the team, though it would imo be odder for MSG to know the entirety and status of everyone working for someone suing them so it's simpler to just ban everyone employed at the firm.

unyttigfjelltol• 4 years ago

I think the issue is that MSG is too big of an organization to fairly institute a policy like this. It's like [FAANG of choice] refusing to serve someone because their [mother/spouse/hairdresser] posted a bad review of the coffee at [FAANG's] office in [fill in a city].

Maybe said company can have such a policy, but they probably shouldn't.

justincormack• 4 years ago

What does the bar have to say about facial recognition for all its members being easily available to anyone with money, apparently? Where does the data come from?

eastbound• 4 years ago

Imagine doing a chargeback on Google for a bug in their app purchase, and your Gmail accounts being revoked.

actionfromafar• 4 years ago

Didn't that happen?

philip1209• 4 years ago

Imagine this system, but for chargebacks. "You issued a charge back against us once, so you're no longer allowed in any of our physical locations ever again. You should have talked to us first."

godelski3• 4 years ago

How did they identify her? Where is MSG getting the data for their facial recognition? This part is confusing to me (I assume some third party vendor, but that's besides the point). Do they have you upload a photo of yourself? Do they have access to driver license photos? If the latter, that's a serious issue that I think we should be talking about: private companies having access to government biometric data. It's already an issue that the gov can track us, but even bigger if they are giving that data to corporations. I think that's the bigger story here.

foolfoolz• 4 years ago

there are tons of people id databases. the photos probably came from her posted to her own account somewhere and got scraped

xapata2• 4 years ago

Probably from a photograph on the lawyer's website. They often post photographs of themselves looking pleasant and well-dressed, along with a summary of their careers.

godelski3• 4 years ago

Still, this doesn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth.

banana_giraffe• 4 years ago

The law firm in question has headshots of their attorneys:

https://www.dsslaw.com/our-firm/attorneys/kelly-analiese-con...

It wouldn't take much to feed the 7 pictures into a system.

godelski3• 4 years ago

I get that (others mentioned this already) but I still feel this is creepy. It's definitely not the expectation people have when they show their faces on their websites. I think this is just going to encourage people to not show their face as much because this is seriously not okay.

kstrauser12• 4 years ago

I’m thrilled to see facial recognition applied against people in a position to speak out loudly against it. A lot of people seem OK with it when it’s policing the bad parts of town. This is their reminder that it can be used against them, too.

bboygravity• 4 years ago

I don't think what a lot of people think about facial recognition is very relevant for its adoption or evolution?

CCTV and facial recognition are both used around the world accross cultures and political systems and not 1 citizen voted for (or against) them. Not in totalitarian regimes nor in countries that pretend to be democratic.

kstrauser12• 4 years ago

Democracies have more luck voting against them: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-bans-use...

oceanplexian2• 4 years ago

It’s because we aren’t governed by a democracy, we’re governed by a massive administrative state. Some middle manager vying for a promotion decides adding cameras will benefit him in some way, privacy be damned. For example, TSA recently started doing facial recognition in airports and most passengers were just happily going along with it last time I went through security. The public is expected to submit and comply, there’s no democracy anywhere in that process.

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

it can be used against them, too

Is it facial recognition that's the problem here, or the policy itself? In theory, they could hand out pictures of everybody who wasn't allowed in to the security staff and use low-tech facial recognition to enforce the same policy - assuming it was scalable, would it be OK then? I remember reading that IBM got into trouble when it first computerized its personnel files because some exec noticed that the computer could scan through all the personnel files and fire people who were close to retirement to save on paying out their pensions. It would have been prohibitively expensive to pay a person to do that, but with the computer, it was a quick SQL query (or whatever query language IBM used back then). The problem wasn't that the personnel files were computerized, it was that they were being used in a very evil way.

kstrauser12• 4 years ago

You're right: it's the policy that's bad. However, facial recognition is what makes enforcing that policy possible, and society and the law haven't changed quickly enough to deal with the repercussions.

For instance, say 18 year old "Joe" gets caught stealing soda from a fast food place. The manager kicks him out and bans him from the store. Fast forward a decade, when Joe walks back into the store with his wife and kid to buy a quick meal.

Without facial recognition: Joe's grown up and matured. The manager was either replaced years ago, or doesn't remember the incident, or vaguely remembers but doesn't care about it anymore. Joe and his family pay, eat, and leave.

With facial recognition: the system notices that someone on its "do not allow" list has entered the store and summons police to deal with the trespasser.

When human judgment is involved, we rarely deal with absolutes. A lifetime ban isn't really for life. It's until both parties grow up and the situation cools down. A ban on a competitor's employees isn't absolute. Maybe you won't serve the owner, but if his dishwasher comes to your place on a date, you're not gonna hassle the kid. We're really, really bad at designing automated systems that handle nuance. It's way easier to write code like `if photo_hash in banned_people: ...`.

TheFattestNinja• 4 years ago

Both. Id argue that in addition to the policy being bad, she probably didnt agree to her image feeding into the dataset backing the facial recognition, which raised some spicy privacy questions: how did this private company get the image? Under what terms of use?

quanticle• 4 years ago

    assuming it was scalable, would it be OK then?

The problem with automated facial recognition technology is that it makes what used to be infeasible suddenly routine and cheap. In the past, would the security folks at Madison Square Garden have even thought about implementing this kind of policy? No, of course not; it would have been obvious from the very beginning that such a policy would have required far too many resources to feasibly implement. At best, they'd have been able to hand out pictures of a few folks, known to be bad actors, and told their security personnel, "Hey, watch out for these people and don't let them in." It's highly unlikely that a random obscure attorney working at the same firm, but not specifically tied to the litigation at hand, would have made it onto that list.

However, today, with facial recognition, it's possible for Madison Square Garden to have blacklists consisting of thousands, or even tens of thousands of people and check against them just as quickly and as easily as if they were a list of a dozen people. That's a qualitative change, and I think it's valid to treat it as a separate kind of thing than a bunch of security guards, each with a stack of photographs.

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

Is it facial recognition that's the problem here

Yes I think so. Some technologies are inherently no good, lacking any obvious positive use cases, but enabling obvious abuse. It is a mistake to shift the blame to "policy" or malevolent actors and claim the technology is merely a neutral enabler. No. The technology itself contains a gamut of evils.

berniedurfee6• 4 years ago

I’d argue the technology takes what was, at one time, a relatively benign and reasonable policy and weaponizes it.

There’s a level of enforcement where a reasonable policy or law becomes unreasonable.

Cameras on every street corner enforcing every infraction, no matter how minor, is an extreme. There’s a threshold before that extreme where the policy combined with the enforcement becomes unreasonable.

I think the combination of policy and enforcement outlined in the article is well over the line.

Retric• 4 years ago

The idea that it would be prohibitively expensive to manually look at each employee’s age on paperwork compared to the cost savings of denying pensions is extremely dubious.

panic• 4 years ago

It's hard to imagine what role this type of mass facial recognition technology would have in a healthy society.

dusted• 4 years ago

I agree, the tech is actually wonderful.

The problem is not that it provides new opportunities, the problem is determining which of these opportunities are acceptable to pursue, and under which circumstance.

I don't like the "this is bad because it allows current laws/practices to be efficiently enforced" attitude that a lot of people seem to hold.

Oh no, in my opinion, by all means, make it 100% efficient, cheap and easy to enforce _EVERY_ policy under the sun.

We need to get on with cleaning up and amending policies until it's not a complete shit show.

Any policy should be written as if it will be effectively and quickly applied to 100% of the cases, and if that makes it look shitty, then it is and must be fixed.

balex• 4 years ago

In other news, guns don't kill people, people do.

But guns sure help.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

Oddly, me too. Things change only when a representative sufficiently well connected person/high status individual is inconvenienced by the current system. Lately, this seems to be the way to actually change things.

<< A lot of people seem OK with it when it’s policing the bad parts of town. This is their reminder that it can be used against them, too.

What is fascinating is that AI recognition did not reach individual homes yet ( say.. won't let you add family members to 'approved' members to open doors, but maybe I should not be giving ideas ). I did hear about it being a toy for the rich though.

test65543• 4 years ago

Just because you have someone on camera committing a crime in this age of deep fakes is no guarantee that they are guilty... But it definitely provides police with a suspect to investigate further.

The most devastating tool for fighting crime is not increasing the penalties or making jail more miserable. No, the most effective way to stop crime is by drastically increasing the chances of getting caught and correctly sentenced.

kstrauser12• 4 years ago

I’m wholeheartedly against facial recognition in legal systems. The fact is that they don’t work well, and they specifically have a bad tendency to identify the wrong black person much more often than they misidentify white people. From [3] below:

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

One. Hundred. Times. The camera may say it recorded John Smith breaking into a house, but it’s incredibly likely that it was actually Ron Jones. Who’s the jury going to believe, though: John Smith who was at home with his girlfriend at the time, or the hugely expensive video system that the city just bought?

Facial recognition doesn’t work. It’s bullshit tech, and we should stop using it until we make it deliver on its promises AND decide how to deal with its ramifications.

[1] https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discriminatio...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/best-algorithms-struggle-recogni...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/19/federal...

berniedurfee6• 4 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I’m waiting for the day a legal defense team presents video counter evidence of the judge, jury members and Elvis all committing the crime the defendant is being accused of.

A video completely indistinguishable from the video presented by the prosecution. Not sure where we go from there.

berniedurfee6• 4 years ago

I’m shocked someone at MSG HQ decided it would be fun to troll a law firm. Good luck with that!

shadowgovt3• 4 years ago

Is the issue the facial recognition of the fact that it's legal to not serve a member of the public because their employer is suing your company?

If the venue manager had kicked her out because he personally recognized her, would that be better?

faangiq• 4 years ago

You are going to be pretty excited over the next few years …

mijoharas• 4 years ago

When put in those terms it's a classic example of progress along the "Shitty Tech Adoption Curve"[0]

[0] https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1331633102762831873

Moto7451• 4 years ago

Yesterday’s Dolan Family Drama: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044818#34060122

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

A lawyer was banned from seeing a popular show for reasons entirely unrelated to physical safety, with an FR twist. She then hit back at their liquor license. Who's got popcorn??

tyingq• 4 years ago

The hit back at the liquor license (which apparently requires admitting the general public, with only very specific exceptions) sounded pretty clever to me.

NaturalPhallacy2• 4 years ago

Hence the popcorn!

nemacol• 4 years ago

Clever but a clear sign that we have no protections on the books for anything like this.

That someone needs to resort to clever liquor license dispute adds to the dystopian feel of this story.

rexpop2• 4 years ago

It's a hack in a domain in which I am not a hacker! Makes me feel vulnerable.

gpvos2• 4 years ago

FR = ?

ancientworldnow• 4 years ago

Facial Recognition

VWWHFSfQ2• 4 years ago

The woman's law firm is in active litigation with MSG Entertainment. She knows she's not allowed on the premises while the lawsuits are unresolved. They saw her and kicked her out.

But this is a controversy because Girl Scout Mom got spotted by facial recognition I guess. Not the fact that she was trespassing.

Last month MSG revoked the corporate suite leased by a law firm that was _actively suing them_. And they made the same big stink about how unfair it was that they can't go to Knicks games anymore.

Pigalowda2• 4 years ago

Sure we can take that matter of fact approach, and she accepts. However MSG is now not allowed to have a liquor license as a matter of fact.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 4 years ago

So I get that this is true, but I don't understand why people are being so "Bob's your uncle" about it. I get that it's a policy but why do so many act like it doesn't deserve criticism?

jt2190• 4 years ago

Conlon is an associate with the New Jersey based law firm, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which for years has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment.
"I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG," said Conlon.
But MSG said she was banned nonetheless — along with fellow attorneys in that firm and others.

gregors2• 4 years ago

The reason why we have "protected status" is that people were banning people based on their racist/hate views. Those people used their 5 senses to easily target the people they hated for discrimination. Other variables (such as who you work for) well that's not easily found out...until now. AI is now allowing for new innovating hate and discrimination to drive decisions.

What an absolute cluster. I don't envy the courts. It's going to be interesting if everyone starts weaponizing every aspect of political affiliation, employment, residence location and social status.

tantalor• 4 years ago

used their 5 senses to easily target the people they hated

No. Very easy to disprove: there are many examples of protected status that is not easy to tell just by looking at someone.

1. Race (esp. mixed race)

2. Religion

3. Pregnancy

4. National origin

5. Sexual orientation

6. Disability

7. Genetics

ceejayoz3• 4 years ago

You've been downvoted, but I'd agree; most of them are not necessarily "visually obvious" and more "stuff you can't easily change".

HWR_142• 4 years ago

In almost all cases, there were people in the protected group who were able to disguise that status. So in those cases just 5 senses weren't perfect. But it was sufficient for at least some cases, which is where the laws came from.

moonchrome• 4 years ago

Just because you can't tell 100% doesn't mean you can't discriminate - and accuracy doesn't factor much in prejudice.

michpoch5• 4 years ago

I assume that is a US thing. How does that exactly work? In what sense are these people protected?

dragonwriter6• 4 years ago

The reason why we have "protected status" is that people were banning people based on their racist/hate views. Those people used their 5 senses to easily target the people they hated for discrimination.

Easy targeting was not the issue, the combination of pervasiveness and the belief that it was unwarranted and/or resulted in an excess of social strife if tolerated was. (Sometimes, it is misportrayed as being about innate characteristics, but this is very obviously not the case with religion, where freedom of religion as a right waa very clearly the outcome of exhaustion with centuries of strife, largely between different factions within Western Christianity.)

madrox• 4 years ago

Factor into this the consolidation of so many industries, and if you happen to run afoul of one company you've effecively become a pariah. Getting banned from Google is bad enough.

There is certainly a line that needs to be drawn, since I somewhat understand the intent behind the ban. However, this will quickly get out of hand now that we can effectively disciminate on so many new factors scale.

archontes2• 4 years ago

I think this should be protected.

A business owner should be able to decline to host someone adversarial to that business.

bmitc12• 4 years ago

That's not what happened here though.

"MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved. While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment. All impacted attorneys were notified of the policy, including Davis, Saperstein and Salomon, which was notified twice," a spokesperson for MSG Entertainment said in a statement.

Seems pretty cut and dry if true. The law firm is litigating against the company, and the company notified the law firm of their policy to not allow employees to attend their venues.

If anything, lawyers deserve this treatment.

makestuff• 4 years ago

Why do the lawyers deserve this?

I can kind of understand the lawyers actively involved in the case being banned from the arena, but why should a lawyer who is not even licensed in NY, and does not appear to be involved in the case be banned?

Should lawyers be banned from going to hospitals they are litigating against?

nraynaud3• 4 years ago

So if someone sues a subsidiary of the group they are banned in the entire group?

That must be really tickling the layers when it's time to ask for damages in civil cases: "well, we're asking to hold the entire group in solidarity for damages, since they conduct business in solidarity, whatever subsidiary we are actually naming in the suite".

azernik18• 4 years ago

Not just if someone sues. If a lawyer takes the case for someone who sues.

But yeah, this is James Dolan, he's banned people for refusing to take jobs before.

tasubotadas• 4 years ago

That's another one for we-are-getting-closer-to-1984-dystopia bingo.

_boffin_• 4 years ago

Question: if she purchased the ticket under her own name and she held a valid ticket upon entry to the venue, would it be fraud if one doesn’t get access to the event? Even more so if she doesn’t get a full refund?

One would presume that there would be measures in place during checkout that would inhibit transactions that go against their policies to not go through.

creaghpatr• 4 years ago

Guessing their on-site security stack must not be integrated with their transaction platform. Or someone else could have paid for the tickets.

pfoof• 4 years ago

So they discriminated a lawyer to not get sued? Doesn't that sound like they just jumped into an anthill?

azernik18• 4 years ago

No, they were already getting sued. They decided for apparently purely emotional reasons to punish not just the plaintiffs, not just their lawyers, but also every other lawyer at the same firm.

kayodelycaon2• 4 years ago

This reminds me of an incident that showed up in one of my college courses: A forklift driver who got fired for drinking Budweiser.

He worked for a company that Miller Brewing company contacted with and a newspaper took a photo of him at a public event drinking Budweiser.

Different situation, same kind of pettiness and retaliation.

TomK322• 4 years ago

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/he-had-a-bud-light-now-h...

Fired for driking Bud Light. Is that even beer I ask as a German...

NaturalPhallacy2• 4 years ago

Legally speaking, it is beer.

kayodelycaon2• 4 years ago

I don't think whether or not Bud Light is beer is relevant to the story.

And to answer your question, yes, it is beer, as defined by https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-I/subchapter-A...

mindslight• 4 years ago

It depends on how drunk the horse was.

beebeepka• 4 years ago

Got warrant?

rexpop2• 4 years ago

This joke is typically boring, but you've raised it to the height of "in poor taste" by wielding it to segue out of the serious subject of a man losing his job.

TheCleric2• 4 years ago

According to German law, no. According to US law, yes.

Now whether it's GOOD is a different question.

kiernanmcgowan• 4 years ago

The required brand loyalty from Miller crazy - friends who have worked for them will pour non-miller beverages into glassware so that they can't be photographed holding a competitor's product. This is not in public mind you, but at someone else's apartment and not on company time.

Not sure if Budweiser / AB does the same thing back but its a really backwards way to run a company culture.

panda888882• 4 years ago

Also something similar. A motorcycle (scooter) company in Taiwan only allows their own brand motorcycle into the company parking lot. So if you commute with a non-company scooter, good luck finding parking.

whoknew1122• 4 years ago

While my experience is over 15 years old now, it was a common practice for the majority of beer distributors at the time.

tricky• 4 years ago

AB did this for sure before the merger. Working there during my prime, going-out-to-the-bars age, I was told that I should only buy AB products and make sure the label was turned outward for others to see. Thought it was weird but I only drink whisky so it didn't really affect me.

enraged_camel• 4 years ago

Didn't Microsoft not allow employees to have Apple devices for a while? Or vice versa? I remember something along those lines.

schwoll• 4 years ago

Well I'm never drinking another Miller again...

FractalParadigm• 4 years ago

When I was driving transport truck I applied for a job at Coca-cola, and was told after the interview I wouldn't be getting the job, because their security cameras saw me drinking a Pepsi while driving in the parking lot. Apparently it's against policy and a firable offense to be caught drinking a non-Coca-cola product on-property or in-uniform anywhere.

spritefs3• 4 years ago

Do any tech companies do something similar to this?

rtkwe4• 4 years ago

At least with this there's the actual lawsuit from the lady's firm and to MSG's slight credit there's no way for them to know who is and isn't working on their case (it'd be even worse if they did somehow know who exactly in a large firm was working exactly on their case to be honest).

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

I feel like the facial recognition part of this is a red herring. The two bigger problems I see here are banning people because of what their co-workers are doing, and enforcing bans when people show up instead of when they buy their tickets.

azernik18• 4 years ago

Facial recognition is important here only in that this insane of a policy would be impossible to enforce without facial recognition.

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

With the merge being approved, there were now only four Corporations. Sure, there were many off-world Corps, but they didn't have any meaningful affiliations and were really just a novelty for Roamers. Everyone, from birth, was employed by a Corp. Mind you, employment doesn't endow a title, salary, benefits, or duties. It just meant you were permitted access the various amenities it provided: transportation, tech, telcoms, housing, food, water, and of course, a social access permit.

Corps are a lot like the "Sponsored Nation" concept from the 2300s, but without the discrete geographical boundaries. This makes it, by design, as some argue, too easy to find one's self in violation of Corporate policies. Usually someone makes a wrong turn or enters the wrong door and winds up in front of an Adjudicator.

Since the merger, however, enforcement of overlooked policies has been on the rise. Given the complexities of the merge conditions, it became very difficult to remember who was employed by whom, which inevitably led to misassociation with non-colleagues. What used to be a social faux pas, paid for with a sheepish smile, would now find you among the Unemployed.

rocketbop• 4 years ago

William Gibson?

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

Just "inspired" by the article and the potential implications of companies buying companies and finding yourself no-longer permitted in some establishment.

gabythenerd• 4 years ago

Sounds like the worldbuilding behind Cyberpunk 2077, it has major corpos and finding yourself among the unemployed leaves you in very bad shape.

schemescape• 4 years ago

I’d buy this book.

methodover• 4 years ago

Dystopian SaaS idea: Integrate facial recognition and Yelp reviews. If someone shows up who gave you a negative review, send a text to staff and/or deny sale at POS.

Please, no one make this.

JackFr3• 4 years ago

Seems like it’s an unpopular opinion, but it seems fairly reasonable to me to restrict someone who is currently, actively suing you from using your place of business.

It’s neither punitive nor petty. It’s simply practical from a legal perspective.

dragonwriter6• 4 years ago

it seems fairly reasonable to me to restrict someone who is currently, actively suing you from using your place of business.

This isn’t someone who is actively suing them.

mbg721• 4 years ago

Even if it were, would that make it better??

amanj41• 4 years ago

I don't take issue to that. I think using facial recognition paired with a database of naughty / nice individuals is going to pose a plethora of societal issues down the road. It is evocative of China's social credit system somewhat.

gnopgnip• 4 years ago

If you want to ban someone from using your place of business you shouldn't take their money and sell them a ticket to a show then

namaria4• 4 years ago

The problem here is not facial recognition or AI. The problem is automatic and opaque enforcement of arbitrary rules with no recourse. It's a scary world where you can be approached by private security and forced to comply without recourse because "the system" flagged you. This dehumanizes us. We're creating a world where people are being treated like cattle, merely handled by systems beyond our capacity to fight back.

Karunamon3• 4 years ago

This is a bit too Luddite for my taste. Humans were involved at quite literally every step of this process. The human decided that this other group of humans is not allowed on their property. The only thing interesting the computer did is tell security that someone not allowed to be there was there.

namaria4• 4 years ago

Jumping to accusing me of wanting to revert technological progress by violence because I am worried about alienation caused by automatic rule enforcement is a bit much don't you think?

raxxorraxor3• 4 years ago

I don't see them improving safety by much either. With the insane amounts of money in this industry, we would have heard about successes. Yet they are far and few between while data and identity theft is a known problem and all these "solutions" add to the danger.

I am very glad to live in a country where you have to just delete everything after a while, which includes data extracted from said material. I don't feel less safe because of that, although I would even prefer to not have these solutions at all.

baxtr• 4 years ago

She wasn’t allowed to a show because she is working as a lawyer.

Conlon is an associate with the New Jersey based law firm, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which for years has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment.

"I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG," said Conlon.

But MSG said she was banned nonetheless — along with fellow attorneys in that firm and others.

SpaceManNabs• 4 years ago

Yet the audience of hacker news typically leans on hating any sense of ethics in AI (check my recent comment history). This is a problem. We need to take ethics in AI seriously.

melony• 4 years ago

Many open source software license have an automatic revocation clause in the event of litigation too. Considering the viral nature of software libraries, that could make life very difficult for people too.

nraynaud3• 4 years ago

can someone explain a bit the reasonning behind banning opposing lawyers from the defendant's venue?

I feel like it's to reduce "on the ground" discoveries in civil cases, but I don't understand why, as far as I know those are neither forbidden nor unethical, there is a later opportunity to debate whether those discoveries gets introduced as evidence in the case.

monksy23• 4 years ago

Retaliation.

nraynaud3• 4 years ago

I was trying to be generous and open in my question.

himinlomax3• 4 years ago

It's similar in purpose to sending your goons to break one of the lawyers' knees, and barely more ethical.

azernik18• 4 years ago

There isn't any information they could discover. The lawsuit is not against MSG the venue, but against a restaurant somewhere else that happens to be owned by the same umbrella corporation.

There is zero motive here other than retaliation.

Nifty39293• 4 years ago

I think it would be helpful in the comments to separate the issue of using facial recognition for public identification and entry, from the other issue of whether this person should have been allowed in regardless of the policy.

Personally I don't think facial recognition should be allowed for public identification.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly fine to bar opposing attorneys actively working against you from entering your business. This is not a member of the "general public" and wasn't denied entry based on identity characteristics. She was banned because she (her firm) is SUING THEM. That seems like a pretty good reason right there...

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

she (her firm) is SUING THEM

You are not the company you work for. And she's not even involved in that case.

azernik18• 4 years ago

Her firm is not suing them. People who were customers are suing them. Her firm is representing those people.

insane_dreamer• 4 years ago

I don't like the consequences of facial recognition tech and what it's going to do to our society and its potential to enhance social discrimination of all kinds, but I have a hard time faulting the venue for using it to enforce an (arguably reasonable, or at least legally viable) admittance policy that had been communicated beforehand to the law firm. This doesn't seem to be a case of discrimination.

CosmicShadow• 4 years ago

The fucked thing about this is that as it's normalized and justified it allows companies and venues to start blocking people it doesn't like for whatever reason and essentially banishes them from society for life.

Critical of Ticketmaster online and they start to take notice? I guess you wont' be allowed into most venues or concerts for life on this continent. We also won't tell you why you were banned or offer a way out (because that's how Google and Facebook operate and it suits us). It's allowing people to be kicked out of "real world" walled gardens.

benreesman• 4 years ago

The Constitution wasn’t designed for this. The framers did an amazing job at writing documents and expressing ideals that have held up astonishingly well through insane technological change.

But if I want my face catalogued next to my social credit score why not go all in and move to China?

It’s not great but the only mechanism in sight that seems equipped to deal with this is restraint semi-enforced by social consensus. God knows Congress isn’t going to do anything: piss off both law enforcement and tech? Yeah I think that’s a hard pass from them.

humanistbot3• 4 years ago

The Constitution wasn’t designed for this.

The Constitution wasn't designed for a multi-racial democracy, either. It took a bloody civil war to settle the slavery question though.

inetknght• 4 years ago

And even after the civil war was ended, over 150 years ago, there's still significant portions of people in the modern day who don't act as if the matter is settled.

kergonath4• 4 years ago

The constitution was a compromise between different ideas pushed by different people. It is not a holy text or necessarily the ideal outcome from the point of view of any of its signatories. Its historical and philosophical importance are immense. But even from day one, it was not supposed to be the be-all and end-all. There are lots of things it was not designed to handle.

beepbooptheory9• 4 years ago

I know this is just a rhetorical point of yours, but maybe we can start to accept that America and the west as whole is not actually significantly different from China with stuff like this.

Thinking about it, why would we be? I can't see a good answer to that without appealing to weird/nationalistic/naive ideas about the moral character of states themselves, or simply the understanble nonlogic of "well this is my country, they wouldnt be like that here." At the end of the day, priorites are priorites, incentives are incentives. Efficiency doesn't know or care about culture, it is self-justifying.

chrisbaker98• 4 years ago

America and the west as whole is not actually significantly different from China with stuff like this.

As someone who has spent many years of my life living outside "America and the West": this is not remotely true.

humanistbot3• 4 years ago

I know this is just a rhetorical point of yours, but maybe we can start to accept that America and the west as whole is not actually significantly different from China with stuff like this.

This is such black-and-white thinking. Most EU countries are kilometers ahead of the US, and the US is miles ahead of Russia. Putin would love for Russia to race to the bottom and get to China's level, but Russia is way behind China in terms of technical expertise, investment, infrastructure, and actual coordination/coercion between government and industry (vs crony corruption). And then there are the new Chinese colonies in Africa who get all the surveillance and none of the benefits.

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

Take some hope. This case exposes the technology for the naked fascism it really is. We always knew this is where it would lead, and that there are few legitimate, ethical uses for face recognition tech. That it was a lawyer taking her kid to a show is priceless and will surely contribute to the blanket ban we all hope for.

gonzo• 4 years ago

"You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.” — Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun, Jan 1999

bluelightning2k• 4 years ago

On the one hand this sounds super dystopian.

On the other hand it does kind of make sense that they would refuse service to people actively suing their company. I would do that too. I mean it's kind of common sense

azernik18• 4 years ago

It's not refusing service to "people actively suing" MSG.

Some people are suing MSG.

Those people hired lawyers.

Those lawyers work at a firm.

MSG is banning not just the plaintiffs (the people "actively suing"), and not just their lawyers, but every lawyer at the firm.

dbttdft• 4 years ago

How does some bar theater whatever have a database of where people work? This is broken as fuck.

eppp2• 4 years ago

Her law firm is actively using the venue owners. This isnt just some random person showing up to an event. Her picture is probably on the firm's website.

nashashmi2• 4 years ago

Her legal case:

A sign says facial recognition is used as a security measure to ensure safety for guests and employees.

Use of facial recognition is disclosed with a reason for its purpose. They used the same technology for a different purpose without full disclosure. This is grounds for a violation, although civil. IANAL.

However, she is going about this through another route. Liquor license does not allow them to eject people from service. MSG has a civil policy they will not allow anyone (including lawyers) associated in litigation to enter their venues. Obviously both policies contradict at this point.

My opinion is no one should have any policy that allows lawyers of parties to a lawsuit to be hurt in any way.

tmpburning• 4 years ago

Facial recognition and car tags should be illegal (among many other tracking methods).

js2• 4 years ago

I can see two viable ways to prevent this from happening without taking sides on whether or not businesses should be allowed to deny service to non-protected classes of people.

1. A laser-targeted law banning facial recognition technology used for the sole purpose of denying service.

2. Not letting corporations get as large as MSG in the first place.

I'm a fan of (2). If there's one thing I would hope people across the political spectrum could agree on it's that the Federal government has seriously fallen down on its anti-trust authority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Square_Garden_Entertai...

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

I don't think we should keep corporations from getting that large at all. I just think that once they do get that large, they shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily deny service to people anymore.

EchoReflection• 4 years ago

Time to start wearing "anti face recognition masks"

https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/anti-facial-recognition-...

https://www.survivopedia.com/6-ways-to-defeat-facial-recogni...

What a crazy world we live in...

fortran77• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I'd want people who worked for a company that was currently suing me entering my business either.

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

Do you think Google should have banned the personal Gmail accounts of every Oracle employee?

sidewndr46• 4 years ago

This seems pretty cut and dry to me. If someone had a lawsuit against me, one of my businesses, or the like I wouldn't allow them or their employees into my establishments.

If there is a need for them to be there, law enforcement will be accompanying them.

josephcsible14• 4 years ago

If someone had a lawsuit against me, one of my businesses, or the like

You're mixing her up with her co-workers. She wasn't involved in any lawsuit against MSG.

azernik18• 4 years ago

a) the people who "have a lawsuit" are the plaintiffs, not the lawyers they hired

b) the lawyers they're banning aren't employed by the plaintiffs, but happen to be working at the same firm the plaintiffs went to

TheHappyOddish2• 4 years ago

The fact they’re using facial recognition to do this is frightening. It’s un-American to do this.

Funny, that's the opposite of what I thought. Corporate revenge via technology sounds very American to me.

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

We laugh about China doing this on a massive scale, except it involves things like basic travel and food. Now, we will start doing it to ourselves.

nullish_signal3• 4 years ago

"Davis is now upping the legal ante, challenging MSG’s license with the State Liquor Authority."

Ah, the Devil is always in the Details.

dragonsky67• 4 years ago

So security have received an alert on a person. They start rushing for that person. There would be a significant proportion of the population who would find that uncomfortable if not scary, who is to say how they will react. The person runs away, or does something that the guards think is threatening. The guard pulls a gun and shoots the person... All because they happened to be employed by a company that the venue has decided they don't like.

Sugimot0• 4 years ago

Another chapter in the corporate hellscape of the US. Now your job search includes research on corporate factions and their relations, any outting you attend is preceded by research of corporate ownership and faction relations or security measures in place in order to know if you can attend or attempt to bypass said measures.

walterbell• 4 years ago

corporate hellscape of the US

For multi-national corporations, global clique analysis of investors, supply chains, competitors and regulators may be required.

spritefs3• 4 years ago

The weirdest thing about this to me isn't that they kicked her out because of the litigation, but that they were able to see who she was based off of the facial recognition alone

Like where do they get this data from in the first place? From a data broker? Is it possible to request to have facial data removed from the data broker?

Did she consent to them using facial recognition technology on her at the venue? (If this isn't already a law, that is to say requiring consent... it should be)

ngoilapites• 4 years ago

I can't help it, I see lots of recent corporate developments as a whole new set of "middle-age"-attitudes that permeate in society. This is one of them. Another is Elon's personal & professional mixed events. There is a whole new bunch of things happening in this direction.

arunc• 4 years ago

Face recognition was used to identify a lawyer who works for a company involved in actively suing MSG group. She was booted due to her being a lawyer at that company. Her identify was flagged. She was visually identified and then her id was checked.

IMHO, it’s a bullshit story because the issue is whether a lawyer working for a company suing MSG should be booted from other MSG venues.

Companies/venues had blacklists (deny lists) before face recognition became ubiquitous.

latexr• 4 years ago

It’s un-American to do this.

No, no it is not. It is very much American. The one thing more American than that situation is Americans saying something bad is un-American. You are what you do, not what you say. US Americans need to get their heads out of the sand and stop being blinded by the con of American exceptionalism. You’re not better than others, you’re not revered, other countries don’t look up to you. You are not a bastion of freedom or justice. You are a country drunk on its own kool-aid, being played by the worse people you have to offer. You need the courage to admit you’re not who you thought. Only then can you enact change to who you want to be.

Quoting George Carlin: “they call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”.

adaml_623• 4 years ago

The biggest US law firm Baker McKenzie (just googled this) has almost 5000 lawyer. Would they be safe from this policy due to the bureaucratic nightmare involved in adding that many faces to the system??

It would also be very interesting if the law firms that were litigating MSG started putting 'different' faces on their employee websites... a little bit of misinformation could cause lots of issues.

contentboot• 4 years ago

I read the article and I have read a lot of comments here.

I couldn't find a single reference to where the data set came from that trained the model they are using to do facial recognition.

Someone did theorize that it could be taken from a hypothetical law firm website but IIRC a single photo of someone is not good enough to reliably train a model that is not overfit.

Facial recognition tech gets woman booted from Rockettes show due to employer

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