The iconic New York theater Radio City Music Hall has used controversial facial recognition technology to identify and prevent the entry of a person who works in a law firm vetoed by the company that manages it, local media have denounced.
The security of the premises has prevented access to a lawyer identified as Kelly Conlon, who works in a law firm that maintains a litigation against Madison Square Garden (MSG) Entertainment (the company that owns the theater), NBC4 reported today. Conlon had bought a ticket for her and her daughter to attend the Rockettes' Christmas show.
As she told the channel, when she went through the metal detector located at the doors of the theater, she heard through the intercoms that someone identified her by her black hair and gray scarf. Conlon has assured that he thought he heard "that the recognition system had detected it. They knew my name before I told them. They knew the company I worked for before I told them and they told me that I was not allowed to be there, " the lawyer told NBC4. The law firm for which she works, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, has been involved in a complaint for years against a restaurant that now belongs to MSG, a company that has decided to veto all the workers of said firm during the litigation.
"MSG has a clear policy that prevents attorneys who have initiated litigation against the company from attending events at our locations until the lawsuit is resolved. While we understand that this policy is inconvenient for some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment," the company said in a statement reproduced by the chain. For its part, the law firm claims that said policy is a "pretext to carry out collective punishment against those who dare to denounce MSG and its multimillion-dollar network."
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the NGO STOP, dedicated to denouncing the abuses of facial recognition technology, assures EFE that "when companies like Madison Square Garden use facial recognition in the way they do, it really raises concerns about whether a company that is supposed to be open to the public and is known to receive a lot of public money to support it has the right to police and retaliate against its customers in this way."
"I worry not only that companies are abusing this technology, but that police and government agencies are abusing this technology every day. And many times we have no idea how they are using it," adds Cahn, whose NGO maintains a legal battle with the New York Police so that it makes public information regarding its use of face recognition. EFE
