By Dr. Robert J. Romano, JD, LLM, St. John’s University, Senior Writer
On September 25, 2025, former New Jersey detective and DOJ agent Donald Ingrasselino filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, against the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation (MSG) after he was terminated from his position as Vice President of Shared Security Services. Per his nine-count. sixty-page complaint, Ingrasselino alleges the following:
- That he was discriminated against due to his disability (Type 1 diabetes – which he alleges requires various accommodations) and age.
- That he was retaliated against and subsequently terminated (wrongfully) after raising concerns about improper and overly invasive surveillance strategies utilized by MSG which included the use of facial recognition technology and investigations targeting individuals with no valid security justification.
- That MSG’s security infrastructure was not there merely for crowd safety, but to “target personal enemies of the Company.” Specifically, his complaint alleges that MSG used various surveillance methods (facial-recognition and biometric systems) to monitor not only fans, but more importantly staff and employees, venders, lawyers and others, in ways he believes were illegal.
- That MGS unlawfully collected and handled sensitive personal information: According to his complaint, Ingrasselino alleges that he was assigned to obtain photographs, Social Security numbers and financial information about individuals and their family members and that MSG had no proper protocols for storage, dissemination or protection of this data.
- That he was asked to assist in efforts to discredit a sexual assault accuser and conduct covert investigations into guests, vendors, and employees, all without a valid business purpose, and
- That there exists a hostile workplace culture under the direction of executive John Eversole, which included the mocking of Ingrasselino’s disability and dismissive remarks about his age.[1]
Ingrasselino’s lawsuit, in addition to the allegations surrounding discrimination and retaliation, highlights the well documented privacy concerns involving MSG’s adaptation of advanced surveillance tools, i.e. facial-recognition and other biometric tracking systems. These issues came to a crescendo when MSG allegedly used facial recognition to detect and deny entry to lawyers from firms in litigation against MSG, even though they were there as patrons and not in an official capacity. This practice prompted New York Attorney General Letitia James to issue a letter to MSG expressing concern that the use in that context might violate any number of human-rights laws or civil-rights statutes.
It is well documented that sports and entertainment venues use facial recognition to identify patrons and ticketholders, sometimes without explicit consent and justify that such surveillance techniques are needed by citing security threats: crowd control, terrorism prevention, banned-list enforcement, and patron safety. In principle, robust security can justify some monitoring of patrons. However, when surveillance tools are repurposed for exclusion of individuals based on litigation status, past behavior, or non-safety-related criteria, the legal and ethical foundations become shakier.
For instance, denying entry to ticket-paying patrons (or their affiliates) without due process, or using biometric tech to enforce that, transforms a protective measure into a potentially punitive or exclusionary system. The key questions are: Are patrons adequately informed about biometric surveillance? Is their data stored, shared or sold? Are exclusion decisions based on lawful criteria (e.g., banned for violence) or improper ones (e.g., litigating against the venue)? Are there safeguards against misidentification, bias and discriminatory enforcement?
From a legal standpoint, private venues like MSG are generally allowed to surveil patrons within their property, so long as they comply with applicable laws (including notice, data-storage, consent, nondiscrimination, and biometric regulations). The use of facial recognition, however, poses elevated risks: the ACLU warns of the normalization of pervasive surveillance and notes that facial recognition has been used in stadiums and arenas without transparent consent mechanisms.
In the state of New York, there are additional layers: laws around biometric data, prohibitions on discriminatory access, and scrutiny from the Attorney General when surveillance is applied in a way that may chill participation or raise retaliation concerns. Though MSG claims its practices are lawful, opponents argue the technology lacks transparency, raises accuracy and bias problems (especially for non-white faces), and creates a power imbalance between large venue operators and individual attendees.[2]
Madison Square Garden’s rich legacy as a premier entertainment arena is now intersecting with 21st-century surveillance technologies and the legal dilemmas they bring. While surveillance in private venues isn’t inherently unlawful, the deployment of facial recognition, especially when used to exclude certain patrons or enforce non-standard rules, raises significant privacy, fairness and civil-rights issues. As both technology and regulation evolve, venues like MSG will need transparent policies, accountability and perhaps more rigorous oversight to ensure that security measures do not undermine the public’s rights. Just remember, we the people have a right to privacy, or as Justice Louis Brandeis (together with Samuel D. Warren II) stated – the right to be left alone.[3]
[1] Case 1:25-cv-07980 Document 1 Filed 09/25/2025.
[2] https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/2023/brad-hoylman-sigal/elected-officials-privacy-advocates-demand-msg?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[3] 4 Harvard L.R. 193 (Dec. 15, 1890).
