Madison Square Garden Ban Puts Him Following Surveillance Systems to His CEO Critics
Madison Square Garden is home to the New York Knicks, one of the country’s most famous performance venues and a surveillance national dystopia. Since 2018, the site has been equipped with facial recognition tools to identify people considered as potential security threats. But it also seems to have become the preferred tool for anyone to criticize MSG CEO James Dolan from space. The latest victim of MSG's Panoramic Eyes is a T-shirt that criticized Dolan for being criticized by Dolan and never even put it on the field.
Seattle resident Frank Miller was held in New York earlier this week for his parents’ wedding anniversary, and the family plans to perform at the MSG-owned venue Radio City Music Hall. Miller was immediately evacuated safely after scanning the ticket, handed over a document informing him that he was banned and asked to leave.
So, what did Miller do to be banned? According to The Verge, he was given to him by staff, and he was told that he was involved in an incident in 2021 that placed him on the DO-NOT-NOTER-ENTER list. But the problem with this explanation is that Miller says he hasn't been to the site at Madison Square Garden for more than a decade.
Instead, it seems that he is doing something that prohibits him. Miller did the graphic design, after Staple Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from MSG in 2017 – Oakley made a t-shirt that read “Ban Dolan” in the style of the Knicks logo. A friend of Miller was kicked out very publicly and banned from attending the venue in 2021 while wearing that shirt to MSG.
The fact that Miller made shirts was obviously enough to put him on the ban list on the venue, and if he showed up, he finally did it for about four years after his friend got the boots. In a statement from The Edge, an MSG representative claimed that Miller “posed a threat to MSG executives on social media and produced and sold goods that were inherently offensive” and that his actions were “disrespectful and destructive and violated our code of conduct.”
Miller is just a long list of the latest characters who seem to attract Dolan’s personal anger and are therefore banned from using the venue he owns. In 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James investigated Dolan’s alleged enemy blacklist, which reportedly included “thousands of lawyers” from as many as 90 lawsuits involving lawsuits against Dolan and the message. There are also some fans who are critical of Dolan on social media, who are now having a hard time going beyond safe performances and games.
Much of the implementation of the Dolan ban appears to be derived from the safe use of facial recognition technology for the site, which can help you with ID personnel on the ban list. But according to Miller's case, some surveillance seems to be conducted. It seems like Miller even the only radar that ends up encountering MSG if someone is scratching social media, keeping critical of Doran's voices and putting them in the system to keep them away from future events. But surely, a billionaire won’t be so thin that it turns his venue into a retribution for his critics… right?
