ShinyHunters Leaks Madison Square Garden Surveillance Records ⇥ 404media.co

Joseph Cox, 404 Media, last month:

ShinyHunters published the [Madison Square Garden] data on Tuesday. The full file download is nearly 45GB. A spokesperson of the group sent 404 Media a smaller sample of the data. One file includes what appear to be emails sent by customers to MSG and sometimes MSG’s response. One email is a man complaining about potentially being flagged by MSG’s facial recognition systems (MSG owner Jim Dolan has long spied on people inside his arenas, with MSG deploying various surveillance technologies, WIRED reported.)

Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner, Wired:

The talent database also tracks some celebrities’ race, gender identity, and sexual orientation; 93 entries are marked as “LGBTQIA.” Why MSG felt the need to label Ricky Martin or Phoebe Bridgers or Geese’s Emily Green in this way is unclear.

“I’ve never met James Dolan. I don’t know the higher-up leadership at Madison Square Garden. But, like, there does seem to be a bit of a pattern here,” says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, citing WIRED’s reporting on the Garden’s minute-by-minute surveillance of a trans woman. “They just seem overly interested in queer and trans people in their venue,” Greer adds.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be the person who put this together, stepped back from their computer, and thought yes, this seems fine. How surveilling people like this is not criminal, I have no idea.