MSG considered facial recognition technology to ID Charles Oakley: ‘Shattered’

Madison Square Garden considered using facial recognition technology to identify whether former Knicks great Charles Oakley attempted to attend a game at the Garden, according to a former MSG employee who spoke with the podcast "Shattered: Hope, Heartbreak and the New York Knicks." In 2017, a few months after Oakley was removed from the Garden by MSG security, the former employee said he was asked by a manager to build out a plan for how the Garden could run its security cameras through an image recognition system. The system described by the former employee in Episode 8 of the podcast matches a 2018 report from the New York Times revealing MSG’s use of facial recognition technology for security purposes. Multiple sources familiar with MSG’s technological capabilities told “Shattered” that the company was developing a multi-purpose image recognition system in 2017. Episode 8 of “Shattered” details the night Oakley was thrown out of the Garden, as well as the internal fallout at MSG from that night.