AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Basketball fans will have their eyes on New York’s Madison Square Garden tonight, where Game 4 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs will take place. President Trump’s presence at Game 3 on Monday night brought attention to the billionaire owner of Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, James Dolan, who invited President Trump to watch the game from his box. This was Trump speaking to reporters last week about the Knicks and Dolan.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve been a Knick fan for a long time, and I’m also a Jim Dolan fan. He’s a nice guy, OK? He’s been a long time wanting to win, and he’s — he’s a competitive guy. And he’s got a team that’s amazing. … The answer is yes. He’s invited me. I’m going.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, tonight, the world’s attention might be on Madison Square Garden, but owner James Dolan will also be likely paying attention to everyone who’s coming to the stadium, specifically watching them. For years the stadium has been notorious for using facial recognition technology to monitor everyone entering the venue. A few years ago, Dolan defended his use of facial recognition technology at Madison Square Garden, speaking to Fox 5 New York’s Good Day New York.

JAMES DOLAN: First off, it’s funny what people think about facial recognition, right? The — when you — you know, you get caught on a camera, which is basically anytime you go in the public, you’re on camera, right? I mean, you walk down the street, believe me, you’re on the camera. Like, you’re on 10 cameras. What facial recognition does is looks at — looks at your — you know, recognizes your face and says, “Are you” — right? — you know, “someone who’s on this list?” Right? So, if you’re a terrorist — right? — it will say, “That’s a terrorist.” Right? And then, you know, appropriate action can be taken. It’s very, very useful for security. In fact, Madison Square Garden, I believe, is the most secure venue in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, a detailed investigation by Wired magazine reveals just how extensive the surveillance machine that Dolan has set up at Madison Square Garden. It’s called “The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine,” by Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman. Noah Shachtman’s latest piece is headlined “A New York Cop Got Injured at a Boxing Match. Now Madison Square Garden Is Banning His Lawyer.”

For more, we’re joined by _Wired_’s contributing editor, Noah Shachtman.

Thanks so much for being with us.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about this surveillance machine, as James Dolan, the Trump ally, who invited Trump to sit with him in his box for Game 3 — talk about him referring to tracking terrorists.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah, so, look, every sports venue is going to have security measures, of course. And many of those may involve facial recognition. But no venue in the country deploys facial recognition so widely and so — and weaponizes it in the way that James Dolan does. He uses facial recognition not just to keep suspected troublemakers out, but, more importantly, he has all sorts of enemies lists. And those enemies include people that he might be in legal disputes with, people that might have tweeted mean stuff at him. And in our story for Wired, maybe the most shocking thing was there is a trans woman who, for the crime of being trans, was surveilled by James Dolan’s spy machine, second by second, minute by minute, even when she went into the bathroom, when she came out, because James Dolan didn’t want her close to the team.

AMY GOODMAN: How did he know about her?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: This was a person — we’re calling her, for her own privacy, Nina Richards. And this is a person that was a familiar face at Madison Square Garden, that knew many of the staff, that knew many of the players, season ticket holder, and had been around the team. And we got a hold of a surveillance report from Pride Night a couple years ago, where this woman wanted to enjoy the game and had pretty decent seats and, you know, got a drink, like everybody else, and got some hot dogs, like everybody else, and even got escorted to an even better seat, which does happen from time to time if you hang around the Garden. And second by second, every single place she went, she was surveilled. And that was captured in a detailed report that we obtained.

AMY GOODMAN: What did she do about this?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Well, that part we don’t know entirely. We know there was some kind of legal dispute, and we know that she was eventually banned from the Garden and is no longer allowed to be there. So, it’s one of many outcomes that happens with Dolan’s spy machine. Some people are banned. Some people are merely put on a watchlist and surveilled. Some people are given warnings.

But, to me, the more shocking thing is not just what happens inside the Garden, but that around the Garden and even in the greater New York area, Madison Square Garden security forces have assigned themselves the task of policing that — these areas and acting as a kind of second ersatz police force in Midtown Manhattan. To me, most shockingly is that when there are protests going through Midtown — for example, pro-Gaza protests — Madison Square Garden security staffers, according to a lawsuit that was recently filed, are basically told to surveil those protests and to embed — and one former security officer said he was ordered to embed inside those protests in order to do intelligence work.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait. Talk about Dolan’s head of security, John Eversole — who had his team cosplay as cops patrolling the neighborhood to spy on protesters?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah, when I mean cosplay, I mean act as if they were cops, not actually put on cop uniforms. But, yeah, they would go, and they would bust, you know, what they deemed to be bad merch sellers. They would bust what they thought were ticket scalpers, or just clean up the neighborhood. And they employ a lot of ex-cops in order to do that, one of whom, actually, had to be hospitalized after his work for the Garden. So, no, it’s incredibly serious, and it’s incredibly strange. They police the neighborhood without any coordination with the NYPD.

AMY GOODMAN: “A New York Cop Got Injured at a Boxing Match. Now Madison Square Garden Is Banning His Lawyer”?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Yeah, that’s right. So, it’s pretty common, throughout the city here, for cops to earn some extra money by working for private corporations. There’s, in fact, an NYPD program where you can hire cops, through the NYPD, to do some extra work. There was the guy that, unfortunately, got killed, Officer Islam, who got killed at the NFL headquarters maybe a year ago on such work.

Anyway, this guy was working a boxing match. The rapper Lil Tjay and his crew were there, got involved in an altercation. This cop says he suffered spinal injuries and wanted some payback for his, you know, hospital bills. His lawyer is a guy named John Scola, who’s a famous lawyer in New York, who covers a lot of cops when they’re suing their bosses. Anyway, they filed a lawsuit, something that happens all the time, and MSG banned him for the crime of doing his job.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, the blacklist goes beyond MSG, right?

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: The blacklists, made by using the facial recognition, extend to other MSG-operated entities, like Radio City Music Hall.

NOAH SHACHTMAN: Like Radio City Music Hall, like the Beacon Theatre and like the Sphere in Las Vegas, that incredibly popular high-tech venue. In fact, we got screenshots from the surveillance system that showed a little girl — I can’t believe she would have been any more than 8 or 10 years old — that had been captured by the Sphere’s surveillance machine and had been labeled a “priority 8,” the highest-priority threat in the area. So, this doesn’t just capture, you know, enemies of Dolan. It captures everyone. And some people get labeled as threats, even when they’re clearly not. They’re little girls.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to encourage people to read this. As some watch the game, who’s watching you? Especially those who can afford to go to MSG and watch the playoffs of the NBA. Noah Shachtman is a contributing editor at Wired. We’ll link to your pieces, “The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine” and “A New York Cop Got Injured at a Boxing Match. Now Madison Square Garden Is Banning His Lawyer.”

Up next, the Trump administration has begun dismantling a $370 million ocean floor observatory network that monitors ocean currents, marine ecosystems and data for climate change. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “The Price I Pay” by Billy Bragg.