Madison Square Garden — one of the most famous arenas in the world — has been doing something that should alarm all of us. It's not just scanning faces at the door. It's keeping files on people who speak out against it.

A document exposed in a recent data breach, titled "Facial Recognition Activists.docx," shows that MSG compiled detailed profiles on privacy advocates who had publicly criticized the venue's use of facial recognition technology. The dossier included their personal contact information, social media handles, follower counts, and quotes from news articles and tweets. It was stored on MSG's internal company network, accessible to staff across the organization.

The three people targeted — Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and Adam Schwartz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation — had done nothing more than speak to reporters and post on social media. Their offense, in MSG's eyes, was criticizing how the company used surveillance technology on its own customers.

This is the danger privacy advocates have been warning about for years. "It raises the question of what's going to come next," Schwartz said in earlier media coverage. "Will companies use facial recognition to keep out all the people who have picketed the business or criticized them online with a negative Yelp review?"

MSG has used its facial recognition system since 2018 — not just to screen for security threats, but to block entry to lawyers whose firms were in litigation with the company, even attorneys with no personal involvement in the cases. A man who once made a T-shirt mocking MSG's owner may also have been flagged. Now we know the company was also tracking the people who dared to say publicly that this was wrong.

"Large companies can and will use surveillance tech to punish critics, exploit workers, and consolidate power, with no regard for the basic rights they trample in the process," Greer said in a statement to 404 Media.

No private company should have the power to build a surveillance apparatus that targets people for their opinions. No venue should be able to scan your face at the door and then compile a file on you for tweeting about it.

Sign this petition to demand that Madison Square Garden immediately end its facial recognition program, delete any dossiers compiled on critics and activists, and be held accountable for using surveillance technology as a tool of corporate retaliation.