Pablo Torre Finds Out - We Got Inside Knicks Surveillance — and MSG's Deep State Is Stranger Than You Think

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Tracking players. Monitoring kids. Allegedly watching a fan enter the bathroom. The panopticon of notorious owner James Dolan has been caught in glimpses. But a WIRED investigation — revealed in collaboration with PTFO — lifts the veil on the Orwellian scope (and occasional clown show) of MSG security, from The Garden and The Sphere to the streets of New York and out across America. Correspondent Noah Shachtman and Pablo hear from spooked insiders, read snooping group chats, scour a second-by-second confidential report, plus view the facial-recognition database itself — only to discover that paranoid billionaires... are all around us.• Read the full digital cover story at WIRED• Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter for exclusive access, documents and invites(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. When I walked into the studio, right, did you recognize my face? I did. Facial recognition. Right after this ad. So what are we doing? We're talking about the playoffs?

We're talking about how every time I walk around our city, both of us are from Manhattan, born and raised, people yell at me. Don't go after Jalen Bronson. Yeah, absolutely not. Leave the Knicks alone is the number one bit of feedback that I get while doing my power walks around the city, which is how I exercise as the Knicks are entering the playoffs. It's very clear that people are afraid that a show like this that cares about investigating stuff might partner with someone like Noah Shackman to do an episode about the New York next. And so this is a collaboration that we've done with you in Wired Magazine. It's a big new feature you have. double byline, you and Bobby Silverman, and we got documents, Noah.

We sure do. I want to introduce you to the proceedings here with a line from your article. That's okay. Yeah. Because it does say that in your decades reporting on national security, and this is you as a journalist who's covered the Pentagon, covered intelligence services. You've gone to Iraq, to Afghanistan, how many times and all? I mean, not that many, but too many. And yet, quote, you never encountered people taking such a lab at.

separate steps to avoid being outed as a source, as you did reporting on this story from inside of Madison Square Garden. Yeah, it was nuts, man. You know, we were reporting the story a lot in this crazy cold winter that New York had, and we had sources who, like, insisted on staying outside the entire time. We had people who were absolutely convinced they were being tailed. We had people that were terrified. They were being watched.

Several of our sources were current and former members of the members of the people. the Garden Security team. And many of those people were former cops, you know, were figures in law enforcement or intelligence of some kind. And it's a matter of public record. You can go on LinkedIn and see that former FBI agents, former CIA officers, and former New York City cops join the Garden security staff. And so in a way, I know it sounds crazy, but these terrified people were, you know, we're

were part of James Dolan's deep state. And I think the first time that sports fans realized that the owner of the Knicks might be allowing for a kind of surveillance state inside the actual arena was February 2017 when this happened. Former NBA player Charles Oakley was dragged away from the Knicks Clippers game Wednesday night after he got into an argument

with a security guard at Madison Square Garden. Eventually it gets physical and Oakley starts shoving the guards. The guards have to take him out physically. There you see. escalating. That is bizarre. And Ben Higgins, our sports director, Charles Oakley, one of the most curmudgeonly people that's ever played sports, who also is quite combative.

I mean, this is him getting kicked out of the garden in 2017 on national television amid the escalation of a deeply personal battle with James Dolan himself. This still makes me sad to see. Yeah, me too. This is Charles Oakley. I would say the patron saint of the security guard, as athletes are concerned, the protector of the star players. Certainly good at defense. A local hero who is swarmed by dudes wearing suits.

Now look, he's a big guy. You're going to need a lot of people in suits. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven suits that are like laying hands upon him to escort him out. Did you say anything to James Dolan? He was in front of you. Four rolls pumbed over. I didn't. I didn't say nothing to him. Why? Why did they approach you then?

Why? Yeah. I don't know. And so something I've always wondered is, like, what it felt like to be one of these security guards at the garden, one of the security employees. Truly, part of the impetus for a story like this is, what are these people thinking? Yeah. Who is ordering this? How does it work? Where does he go? And what I saw from afar at the time was Charles Oakley getting caught.

And then winding up on the front page of the Daily News under an admittedly good headline, Charles is charged. That's excellent. And James Dolan, meanwhile, to ESPN says, quote, he may have a problem with alcohol. We don't know. End quote. But the thing we know now, thanks to your reporting here, is somewhat happened in the aftermath of that incident at the Garden. So what Oakley didn't know and what I was shocked to find out was after talking to one of the security sources for this. story in this is a direct quote they wanted to have us doing covert surveillance operations on him just to see where he was at what he was doing at the time to try to dig up something to use end quotes yep not just in the garden but outside the garden like way outside the garden outside

of new york hundreds of miles away i cannot imagine that charles oakley appreciated the idea of being tailed all across America. He did not appreciate that, no. And so what we did here at Pablo Torre finds out is call up Charles Oakley ourselves to ask him about this allegation. Whatever they were looking for, it was just, it's insane. But when people got money, they can do a lot of things.

And you hear more and more every year about what he had done to fans, people who pay their money to come to the game. He shouldn't be able to dictate the way he dictating stuff, you know. And other owners of the NBA, it's embarrassing to hear that they let him do stuff and the commissioner over and over and no penalty. It's just not right.

And we should be very clear that Charles Oakley at this point has been a longtime critic of Jim Dolan. Yeah. And his defamation claim against Dolan and his companies, that has been dismissed, although the legal battles, those still continue to this day. But one part of this story that we wanted to hear for ourselves, here on this show from Oakley personally has to do with a knight at the garden and he's with the guy he used to protect on the court.

Yeah. Patrick Ewing, the Hall of Famer, the sweatiest, most glorious figure in my childhood. And at the time of this story, Patrick Ewing was an assistant coach for visiting Charlotte. Here they are back in the building together. I was in the garden. Me and a friend of mine, Mac, and we just sitting behind the bass.

And Patrick was out there on the court, working guys out. And he came over, you know, he's had his suit on, gave us doubt, this and that. So we just sitting there watching the game. Had time come, I get up and go to the bathroom. And I see, like, guys follow me. I'm like, what is this? And after the game, we're in the back, you know, Patch was there, you know, what's the other hand, this and that? We started talking. And he was saying, like, don't talk too loud. But, you know, it's miced up. I said, what to me about miced up? He said, they got the whole bill and, like, miced up. And, like, it was just crazy. And I was just so shocked to hear that for him saying that.

If you've lived in New York, if you're a basketball fan over the last 10, 15 years, you've heard some version of the story of James Dolan is super paranoid. Controlling. Controlling has a vast enemies list. But the thing that you've been digging into, that's the shit that kind of blew my mind. Yeah, this goes way beyond what happened to Oak. What happened to Oak started way before the garden went high-tech in its security pursuits and surveillance pursuits before it really fully developed this deep state. Right.

But what shocked me, as I learned this, was just how relentless the pursuit of that enemies list was and how sophisticated that pursuit could be at times. And I think to me, like the even scarier notion, right, is like Dolan is kind of a test case for this. Which is to say that James Dolan, as the NBA is concerned, as pro sports is concerned, is something of a pioneer. Yes, he's the future. And frankly, I did not think I would live to see the day where we had the proof from the inside of what these people are telling each other and how they're operating,

given the tools now available to them to execute a deeply personal agenda. Honestly, I didn't either. When I got started on this, I didn't think we'd get this deep, but we did. It's funny to get to introduce James Dolan as a character to someone for the first time, potentially. I know. But, like, when you say that name, what does come to mind immediately? I think what comes to mind immediately is the fedora. His music career as well.

Yeah. His band was called J.D. in the Straight Shot. Yeah. They were sort of an Americana band. There was a fiddle involved. There was an upright bass involved. And, you know, because of Dolan's many connections in the music and entertainment businesses, they would, like, go on the road and open up for the Doobie brothers and Don Henley.

Oh, I mean, Jim Dolan, for those not familiar with from whence he comes, I mean, this is the son of Charles Dolan, this cable television tycoon who built an empire, a sports and television empire. Yeah, this is a sprawling media empire. that James Dolan came into. And, you know, for a lot of years in New York was kind of like a punchline. Yeah. Here's the, the Nepo Baby Failson

that fans chant about. Yeah. Sell the team, you know, asking for him to somehow be fired, which is functionally impossible because he is, again, the owner of the team. I do also need to say, we are talking in the year 2026. We just say that the James Dolan we've just described

is currently living some version of the dream. No, he's winning. He's winning. He may have started out with this image of a fedora wearing nepo baby failson, but he has really come into his own. Yeah, I mean, the Knicks are about to be in the postseason again. Again, right, for the third or fourth year in a row.

They're a top three seed. And meanwhile, the sphere. Yeah. Speaking of entertainment products, which very few people thought he could actually pull off has become a huge, instantly iconic part of the American entertainment landscape. He now sits as the CEO or chairman or both of, I think, four different companies. And I think their collective valuation is now in the $14, $15 billion range. You know, he has become a genuine tech mogul in a lot of ways.

The sphere entertainment alone is valued at like $4 billion. Yeah. Which is to say, as Charles Oakley wants to put it, people who got money, they can do a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, and that's particularly true in Tolan's case. And so in some ways, it's been a long time coming. And in other ways, what we're here to talk about is how he's gone from Nepo baby, fail son, to Big Brother.

Madison Square, nice to have you here. Thanks, Rosanna. So what is going on with facial recognition and the policy that you you have. Well, look, facial recognition, right, is just the technology, right? I mean, when I walked into the studio, right, did you recognize my face? I did. Facial recognition, right? So, I mean, technology just makes you better at it, right? The real issue that's going to... I just love that as a summary. It's incredible. AI could never give you what James Dolan just gave you. Do you recognize this face? Uh, hey. Boom, facial recognition. Yeah. Also, does AI wear a scarf like that? No.

Never. Could AI ever look like? George Costanza out of flea market. No. Come on. But look, that clip, which is embedded into my brain, that was January 2023, local Fox Station, Rosanna Scotto, another local legend. Totally. Trying to understand exactly what everyone else is trying to understand, which is what

is happening with this story in which James Dolan has banned literally entire law firms from entering his buildings. The real issue that's going on here is our population. of not letting attorneys, right, and they were suing us into our building until they're done, right, suing us. When they're done, they're very much welcome back. Yeah, there'd be a suit against him, and so everybody associated would all of a sudden get banned from the garden. You had a case where one of those lawyers was trying to bring her nine-year-old daughter, a Girl Scout. An actual Girl Scout. An actual Girl Scout to Radio City Music

Hall, which Dolan also owns. Of course. To see the Christmas show, to see the Rockettes, and the mom was blocked from Radio City. Her legal partners were in some kind of dispute with Dolan. So the coworkers of that lawyer in litigation, they got, yeah, banned. At one point, at least, the total number of banned lawyers was estimated at 1,500 people. Right, although one of Dolan's attorneys estimated that the ban might affect something more like 900 lawyers who are living in and around the city. And on that note, James Dillon was not exactly shy in saying why he was using facial recognition technology. He was saying, we are doing this to basically ban our enemies.

You're not going to back down because, I mean... Not at all. Some of the attorneys tried to sue to get back in. A judge tossed that suit. Some of the bans have been lifted, but for the ongoing cases, his legal vans persist. Yeah. We should also point out that James Dolan and his security force had also blocked a graphic designer from seeing a concert because that graphic designer, Noah, had committed a heinous crime. The worst. He had sold exactly six copies of a T-shirt that said banned Dolan. And so this guy was later on, he was bringing his parents to a concert, and he got banned from that concert.

And so all of this speaks to, I think, not simply paranoia and not simply to sensitivity. and not simply to vengeance, these words we've all sort of been using to describe how James Dillon operates for years in this city. It also speaks to how, quote unquote, self-defense is something a billionaire would cite to create this private surveillance state while also receiving public money without, of course, the public fully appreciating what's happening behind the scenes. The garden has to defend itself, right? This is what I say. People say, you know, you're too sensitive, you shouldn't defend yourself. You know, it's like something out of

the godfather, you know, it's like, hey, it's only business. It's not only business, right? You know, he's talking about to defend itself against its enemies, and he's got this growing enemies list. Yes. And so since 2018, he's been putting in place

a network of surveillance cameras and increasingly sophisticated software to enforce that enemy's list, to use biometrics, to use facial recognition to keep people out of Radio City, out of the Beacon Theater, out of the garden. That clip that we just played happens. And since then, the rise of this surveillance state kind of fades into something like normalcy. Yeah, it's normalized. It fades into the background. It becomes, I don't know, just another way in which our privacy is thrown out the window.

And so a really crucial piece of documentation that I think is essential to understanding this story is a document that the Athletic originally reported on. This is a civil complaint filed against MSG Entertainment and its security boss last September. Who filed the civil complaint? It's a former member of the Guard and Security staff. It's saying that he was forced into doing work that he was not physically able to do and shouldn't have been asked to do. Allegedly. But as soon as you get beneath that one thin layer, you get into some really wild stuff. And just to be clear, this guy, this litigant, he didn't want to talk to us on or off the record.

The guy that filed an affidavit in support of this lawsuit, a former New York City cop who worked for the garden, he didn't want to talk to us on or off the record. But all of our other sources within the garden's security apparatus, they started mentioning to me this one name over and over again, this one case over and over. again. What was the one name that your current and former security sources at the Garden kept bringing up? We're talking about a fan here. We're going to call her Nina Richards to protect her privacy. She didn't respond to a request to comment from my story about how she was treated by the garden. But she did ask that we not use her real name, and so we're going to respect that. But this is a transgender woman, went to a lot of games. She, you know, was friendly with a number of staffers at the garden, you know, was a known figure there.

And this story continues beyond the 60 pages in the civil complaint to this other document, Noah, that you exclusively obtained. Yeah. I'm holding it. This is 18 pages. It is an internal document that has my favorite kind of watermark because it says confidential all over it. And it has Madison Square Garden letterhead at the very top.

It says the Madison Square Garden Company. and it looks like a spreadsheet. It has time codes down to the very second. One column list is just a list of the surveillance camera. The information is coming from. It has descriptions. Detailed logs tracking this particular fan, Nina Richards, her every move.

And when I say every move, I am not exaggerating as we will see because all 18 pages are devoted to this one person at one game. Even though, to be clear, None of the sources that we talked to said that Nina Richard presented a threat in this moment in any way, shape, or form. This is a fan. And so now I just want to read from it. To quote the top, she attended the New York Knicks v. San Antonio Spurs game on January 10th, 2022, and CCTV,

and CCTV, close-circ television, confirmed she was in attendance. Yeah, in fact, it was Pride Night. Presenting our nation's colors this evening, as well as the pride and transgender flags. Please welcome the New York City Police. Police Department. 7.09 p.m. and 40 seconds, CAM 0174. Nina Richards, again using that name

as a stand-in for the redacted name, enters from the South Concourse. 7.10 and 20 seconds, Cam 0241 spots Nina Richards scanning her ticket to Section 102, row 8, seat 5. For those who are not familiar with the garden seat map from Stubhub or elsewhere,

this is the main bowl. It's behind the back. basket. And in fact, if you skip now seven spreadsheet cells down, which takes us a whole four minutes and 33 seconds later in time, you get to Nina, quote, sitting in her correct seat, and you get corresponding images in appendix C, because of course there are appendices. And there it is a printout of, yeah, a pretty sparsely occupied section with a big red circle around the target in question. Yeah, I mean, it's creepy. We're getting to a red-colored block. The Terror Alert Scale has ramped up at 827 and 24 seconds.

Hugging the security officer? 828 and 9 seconds. Escorted by the same security officer. And look, there it is. Appendix I, 828 and 20 seconds. The security officer enters the level 6 elevator with Nina Richards and female guest. This is a photo from inside. of the garden elevator.

And what is happening in Nina Richards' evening here? Nina Richards is living the dream. I mean, all of us that are Knicks fans have a dream, right? That we can know a guy who knows a guy who can get us better seats in the third quarter. And that's what's happening here. Nina Richards is getting upgraded. Is getting upgraded.

And so 843 and 40 seconds, the description reads, guy with an orange fedora hat speaks with Nina Richards' It's important to point out that despite the previous mention of a fedora, this guy is absolutely not James Dolan. This is not James Dolan, but at 8, 48, and 22 seconds, dun dun, there's another hug. Another hug, same camera. And then two minutes and two seconds after that, again, same camera. Nina enters women's bathroom. They're following this person into the bathroom.

And two minutes and five seconds later, Nina Richards exits women's bathroom. It's like, what is the point of this? And the red alert returns at 906 and 26 seconds. Now headed courtside. Yeah, the same security officer is seen speaking to her. Appendix Q gives us the picture of that. 907 and 33 seconds,

security officer walks over to Section 1 and row 1 and speaks with guest. And then at 908 in seven seconds, at last, Nina and female guest take a seat at Section 1 and Row 1. Appendix T, providing the proof and scene. Again, this is not somebody threatening anyone at the garden. This is not anybody violating any security policies or procedures. This is a transgender woman on Pride Night getting a good seat. And so your security sources, when it comes to the people who are not involved again in the filing of the civil suit, but spoke to some of the allegations involved, what do they say about the garden wanting just this granular, literally second by second level of surveillance?

People were baffled. The lawsuit alleges that this was an act of gender profiling, and source after source said some variation of this was harassed. This was not okay. Pose no threat. This was just a transgender woman being a fan walking around. The lawsuit, which is, again, filed by this former MSG security staffer, it alleges that the Guard and Security boss believed that Nina's, quote, presence as an openly transgender woman could, quote, damage MSG's reputation, end quote.

And in fact, the lawsuit claimed that people that did post-GISB, pose actual threats that actually had much more, you know, criminal background or what have you, didn't get this kind of surveillance. One fan, one night, 18 pages. And this wasn't the only time that Nina Richards was surveilled. She was tracked over a series of months and maybe even years. We should say that WIRE did send a detailed list of questions to Mass and Square Garden about your reporting, about James Dolan, about his chief of security, who we will absolutely get to in a bit here.

and you gave them a long time to respond. Really long. And how many of your specific questions did they ultimately answer? Zero. And what did they write back, if anything? We got a brief letter from their legal team, and we got a two-sentence response from their spokesperson. This story is built on false, misleading, and unverified allegations,

including claims drawn from lawsuits filed by rapacious litigators, We categorically reject such reckless reporting and are actively evaluating our legal options against Wired. We sent our own request for comment here at Pablatori Finds out to MSG. They refer to the same statement. It is interesting. In its own court filing in the civil case that the garden does acknowledge the monitoring of this woman, quote, as being described in excessive, needless detail to garner attention for his, being the litigants lawsuit, end quote.

but it does not deny the surveillance, which is, again, hard to, I suppose, refute based on what we're holding in our hands. And we've been talking, of course, about James Dolan being at the very top of this. Yeah. But in terms of whose eye is all seeing, whose personal perspective, these cameras embody on a night like this, who was in charge that evening? Yeah, well, there's somebody in charge of that entire organization, the chief security officer. of Madison Square Garden. The guy behind the eye. That's right.

Behind all the eyes. So the guy behind the eyes, you should say that there is not a lot about the chief security officer of the Madison Square Garden Company. We're not finding a ton on the internet, Noah? These security guys sort of are well known for trying to keep their profile pretty low.

But in that world, he's kind of a known figure. And his name is what? John C. Eversal. And it is kind of perfect that the guy who is watching everybody does not want to be watched by dint of his public profile, I suppose. But we did find this grainy photograph. This was taken at the garden

during Donald Trump's rally in October of 2024. He has a beard, he's standing in the tunnel, he is inches away from James Dolan, who has his hands in his pockets, right at the corner there in front of that stanchion. And we did find one more close-up photograph. Yeah, there he is. I got to say, this guy in this field is a top player.

When you're running security for the Knicks, for the Rangers, for Sphere, Madison Square Garden, that makes you one of the top, like, thought leaders in this industry. And I had one tech exec say to me that he was a, quote, quote, badass who could, quote, tell the NBA and the NHL what to do, not the other way around. He's the Jalen Brunson of the security state. Man, you really are going to get us into trouble.

Is he manufacturing files? Who's to say that seems like a legal question? A legal question we can't grapple with here at the moment. Now, listen, I don't know if he's the Jalen Brunson of the security state or if he's even the Tyler Colick of the security state. I don't know which. But he's certainly in the upper echelon. What we did in tribute to this reputation,

was keep searching. Keep searching the public record. Keep searching what's knowable about John C. Eversole. And we did eventually discover that he made kind of a key error in his personal security, in his obsec, because something we found is his public Facebook profile.

And then there's this. Yeah. So this is a black cat on a bed, it appears, with bright, hot pink names. This luxurious black cat led me to another rabbit hole, which suggests that maybe these brainpick nails are stick-on colored claw covers. I was able to find other photos of cats with such hot pink nails. Not all of them are posing like Rose in Titanic being drawn by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Nonetheless, if you zoom out, you find a more unique feature, I would say. Yeah, that's a handgun on the bed being pawed by the pink nails and the black cat. And it's like, what is that and why is that one of your three photos images on your Facebook? That's quite the statement there. In comment to this photo, a member of Eversaw's family says, best pick ever. I was going to say, is there any comment from Hebrosell or MSG? And I suppose that will have to suffice. Yeah, no, he didn't comment back to us.

The Garden didn't respond to our detailed list of questions. He didn't respond to our detailed list of questions. But we are left with that enduring picture. And so the job in question here today, the job at the Garden, which he starts in 2018, look, when I imagine the job description, like the listing for that position, What does a security team for a sports and entertainment company even do? I think about, you know, a guy who keeps thousands of fans safe, person who keeps secrets. Yeah, I mean, you've been covering the gambling crisis that's going on in pro sports.

Got to keep those secrets safe. Right. You've got to keep drunk fans from fighting each other. Yeah. Look, this job is brutal, okay? In the craziest city, you've got to keep the craziest drunk. drunkest, most rowdy fans from hurting each other, hurting the players, hurting anyone else. It is an incredibly tough job. You got to keep the fan safe. You got to keep the player safe. You got to keep your information safe. But the other job here, of course, is how closely is John Eversole securing James Dolan himself?

Right. Eversoll is unusual in that he's both the chief security officer for this extensive security enterprise. and he's Dolan's body man for a lot of the time. He's near him all the time. He's got an office on the executive floor right near Dolan. That's incredibly unusual for a chief security officer. Yeah, I just want to actually quote from your story because you write that he was working as part of the CEO's personal protective detail and as the overseer of his vast security intelligence and surveillance enterprise.

Correct. And the personal source of demands that Jim Dolan has about, how he is to be served and protected. What are we talking about there? Well, the two things can kind of run in conflict with one another at sometimes. For example, we've got this written affidavit from a former cop who is with MSG security. Yeah, this is the written declaration in that aforementioned lawsuit. And he says that Eversal created a personal rule, quote unquote,

that he and Dolan could never see canine units, could never see bomb sniffing dogs. when they walk together near the venues. We're talking about the bomb-sniffing dogs that you'd want to catch the terrorists. Yeah, yeah, that's right. What the affidavit says, quote, is that it was due to Mr. Dolan's disdain for dogs. Which is to say that the cat people are clearly in charge.

So look, the proximity that Eversal has, the proximity, you know, both in terms of the importance in the organization, the physical proximity to Dolan, that creates at the very least an impression of someone with a number. enormous influence. But in terms of the guys with the earpieces, we're taking orders from the top, how do we explain the mechanics of the security state

in terms of Eversole and Dolan than telling these other employees what to do? To do that, we've got to talk some hockey. So five years ago, it's May 5th, 2021, Dolan fires the president and the GM of the Rangers. It had been a bad year for the team. Fans are getting restless. Yeah, around 7th Avenue.

after Ranger games. You can feel the tension. Wasn't great. And so we got excerpts of an encrypted group chat of Madison Square Garden security and of Eversoll and his team.

And I would love to table read this with you. The name of this group chat is top flight security. That's right. And I will be, I'll be playing the role tonight of the various MSG security officials who are not

name John Eversol and will remain nameless for a simplicity's sake. Okay, that makes me John Eversal. At 5.07B.M. All active NYR players in. 518. Let's please meet at the Level 2 Commander Center, 530, for a full briefing on tonight's events. Then, prep for one to depart. So at 533, they're saying prep for one. For the sake of clarity, one is what? I believe what he is referring to is, quote unquote, executive one.

That's how they refer to James Dolan. I remember Joe Biden, I believe his Secret Service code name was Celtic. They went a little bit more straight ahead. A little less creative. Yeah. Also, it would be weird to call him Celtic since he runs the Knicks. It's right there. They can go with Nick, but nonetheless, okay.

Or Ranger. Could have called him a Mori, you know, since he wore number one. That's right. So look, here's the thing you've got to understand about this night, like in particular, is like as soon as the game starts, like seconds into it, the game goes completely off the rails. Yeah, there's a fight one second into the game. There's a fight 50 seconds after that. There's another fight after that.

There's another fight after that. There's another, I mean, first five minutes, it's pandemonial. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And just for the visuals here, what the MSG security crew on this group chat are concerned with, is something quite different. Yeah. It's what happened in the third period after the capitals take a significant lead.

Yeah. So, okay, here's Eversal. 922, just heard a sell the team. Any idea who screamed it? I'm near 101. Didn't hear it. 924 p.m. Now Dolan sucks.

Where is it? All of Section 109 now. Section 110. So they are out. Started by two guys on far left, one Blue Rangers jersey, one white shirt, both sell the team and Dolan sucks. Another guy responds. Have, name redacted, and paid detail, do it, no one else, discreet and professional. Section 110.

9.30 p.m., moving back to Sweet, be ready. Get those guys out. What's so illuminating about this group chat is what. really gets these guys sent into what feels like red alert status. Yeah. I mean, they have something like a protocol for when they hear, sell the team or Dolan sucks. Yeah, which is you're supposed to forward the suck chanters information to the intelligence team for what are called workups. So we should say the group chat continues. We're now 11 minutes later.

Yeah. And a member of top flight security rights forwarded the IDs to the Intel team for workups. Then Eversal says, thankin? That is seemingly a typo or, again, a sophisticated code name. Or thank you. And then load in facial. Yeah, load in facial in this particular context, presumably refers to the security team now using the facial recognition technology to flag the fans in question. And then we can do the workups during business hours.

So this was a big part of the Madison Square Garden security operation, which is a big part of the Madison Square Garden security operation, which which is anybody that was on a perceived enemies list would get sort of an open source dossier built on them, would get their social media postings scraped. There's a number of databases that can do criminal records checks, that can do property records checks, that can see what they've said in the media, and they would get what was called a quote-unquote workup. But the threshold for who gets a workup, okay, we got the chanters, what else rises to that level of concern? The threshold they claimed was threats, credible threats.

But the threshold of credible seems, I don't know, not what you and I would describe as credible. So for one example, back in 2021, there was this one teenager in Colorado who said something on Twitter. and Eversall and the Madison Square Garden security staff went into freak out mode. And they actually called the local cops on this kid. But when that happened, according to one of our sources, here's a quote, they would, quote, freak the fuck out. And so top flight security, this team of people, they're trying to hunt down critics of James Dolan all across America. Yeah. We even got another text message about this.

From the same group chat? Nah, a different one. We can't show it on screen. That's part of what I have agreed to. But the text reads, and I'm quoting here, at least they scared the crap, poop emoji out of some 14-year-old kid in Colorado. Yeah.

One veteran of Madison Square Garden Security told me that Dullen would, quote, come in, and he and Eversall would pour over all these social media comments about the Knicks and the Rangers. Yeah, and look, I think that everyone on the NBA internet, on NBA Twitter, has joked about that.

But what you're saying is that James Dolan and his security guys, Janssey Eversole, what they were doing was actually watching and reading and maybe constructing a dossier with your tweets in it to then make sure that you got put on a list.

Yep. And this is where I feel obliged to point out that you've been reporting. story for Wired magazine, which chronicles the cutting edge of technology. And this seems not very sophisticated. Look, the gardens security systems have started out janky, but they've grown more sophisticated over time. And weirdly, they got more sophisticated because of a dude who used to run a quick-loop shop in Montana. I'm totally serious. Yes. Please introduce formally the character of Henry Valentina.

He had back in the day, back in the 90s, he had run a telecom company. After Montana, he'd found himself in Vegas. And when he was in Vegas, he used some of his technological know-how to help out a buddy of his at the McCarran Airport in Vegas. We've all been through it. If you've been through Vegas. There was like a series of fast food places. I think there was a Gordon Beersh and there's a Burger King.

And his buddy was having a problem with employee theft. And so he set up a little system to monitor the employees, to set up cameras. and to spot what the employees were doing to see if they were, I don't know, giving out free whoppers or whatever. While all this is happening, okay, facial recognition as a technology is getting exponentially more sophisticated and easier to implement. Like I talked to one security guy who's like, oh yeah, I've got a facial recognition system set up in my home.

No big deal. Why is it no big deal? For the same, you know, kind of like AI craziness that's going on throughout the country right now. Like it used to be that you had to do these very, very specific guidelines about you must look in this area of the face and that area of the face. And you had to really tell the algorithm what you want to see. These days, you just kind of let the algorithms do their thing and scan on their own. And so that, like everything in Vegas, obviously led to casino work, right? Because Valentino realized that if he could spot the BK thieves, that he could then do it.

more sophisticated facial recognition. Right. That led to a gig at a nightclub at the MGM Grand, a nightclub that at that time, Dolan owned a piece of. Yes, I know Hakasan. So they got a facial recognition system set up at Hakasan, and eventually that led to a gig with the nascent sphere and also a gig in Madison Square Garden.

Which is all to say that the Garden, MSG, Jim Dolan, is in business with this technology. They've invested in a company called Extract 1. That's Extract with an X. And they do those kind of New Jack metal detectors that you now see at a lot of different arenas. Right. They've got cameras implemented in their metal detection apparatus. And those cameras then run the E-Connect, the Burger King, the Hockassan Nightclub algorithms. And they're able to do it incredibly fast. Some are bragging that they could do it like 40 people a minute, that 40 faces a minute they can spot, identify, and then send on to MSG security. This is what the modern contemporary surveillance state at MSG looks like.

Yeah, that's it this season. But there is a real movement of foot in. pro sports and entertainment, to use your face for everything, right? We went from paper tickets to digital tickets. Now they want to go from digital tickets to faces for everything to get into an arena, to buy your booze. If maybe you're a VIP, you get an upgrade. That's being used at the Intuit Dome, Steve Bomber's Palace in Los Angeles, of course.

It's being used at City Field where the New York Mets play baseball games. This is the stuff that's also helping secure the World Cup this summer at SoFi Stadium. At SOFI, for example, according the E-Connect website, they say that, quote, every face that enters is automatically enrolled, allowing for historical search, alert triggers, and association tracking. And so that presumably is how these buildings will catch the bad guys, will catch terrorists. Yeah, yeah. Dolan claims this is all about terrorism. What facial recognition does is looks at your, you know, recognize 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. Well, okay, so let's talk about the law enforcement angle then. Right. So how does that work with the garden specifically? So, I mean, they may talk a lot about stopping terrorism,

but multiple MSG insiders that I talked to so that they tried to incorporate in information from the FBI's most wanted list and what have you. And the thing your article is saying is that, quote, there were discussions about incorporating the FBI's most wanted list, but the notion fizzled out, end quote. Yeah. Why?

Because look, the garden staff, like the guys that were going to tackle Charles Oakley, they're not trained to stop, you know, Osama bin Laden. One source told me, quote, if you upload the list, what's the protocol? You're going to ask your union security guards to go after the guy? If you get a hit, the FBI will shut down the whole arena. So if the FBI isn't involved here, the NYPD as the other department that might be of use here, they're involved how? They're not. And NYPD representative told me that the department doesn't send any facial recognition data, any data to the garden for this purpose.

what you've just established is surprising to me. Yeah, to me too. The whole point here is, think about what Jim Dullen said on Fox 5 with Rosanna Scato. We're here to stop terrorists. Yeah. We're here to stop the bad guys. Yeah. And the question, as always, is who are the guys that these guys are actually stopping?

Right. According to the NYPD, it's nobody on their list. And look, I'm not saying that the garden is unsafe. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that they're not using NYPD data. And so just so I understand then the jurisdiction here. Yeah. So the garden, their security force worries about inside the garden, outside we're talking,

we're back in the real world, talking about, again, the NYPD. Not exactly. According to our sources, the MSG security staff has decided that outside the garden and outside the Beacon Theater and their Radio City musical, that's their jurisdiction too. And so they have functionally started cosplaying as cops in their neighborhoods. But what does that mean in terms of like what can they do if you're just like a fan who dares to say Jim Dolan should be fired and force to sell the team? Well, first of all, I just have to say the NYPD was like, we don't have anything to do with this. We don't know what those guys are up to,

which is weird. But secondly, I don't know what they're allowed to do. But secondly, I don't know what they're allowed to like legally, but here's what the lawsuit says. They go after, like, those guys that sell merch, unauthorized merch outside of concerts and outside of the garden, they will go and bust those people. They will go after scalpers who might be still trying to do their hustle. But they'll do more than that. What the lawsuit says and what we had garden staffers confirmed to us

was that if a protest happened to go by, the garden or one of the other venues, that they'd kind of wiggle their way into the protest and maybe do a little observations on the people protesting. And there are some security sources in your article that say that they were not ordered to insert themselves into any demonstrations,

but they confirm, according to the reporting, that they were asked to observe protests that went anywhere near a Dolan venue. But the point is that there's a non-zero chance that they're living. listening and watching to make sure that what is being done at a gathering like that is of their liking. They at least have that capability. There's at least the motivation and the precedent to keep watch and to listen in as people move in and around the neighborhoods. I even talk to some sources, some people who worked for the garden who say that they're afraid or they've got to be very careful.

careful when they go to like local bars because they're worried that Jim Dullen is watching. So before we let you go, obviously, we need to get back to this list. And whether or not I personally am on it, which is actually news I can use. And I genuinely, once again, do not know the answer to this question, which happens to impact directly my personal schedule and interests as a guy who loves going to concerts and games and events. at various James Dolan properties while simultaneously exercising my First Amendment rights as a journalist and guy who has been furious about how various things,

institutions may or may not be operating. So how is it decided who gets to be on the list? According to our sources, it's up to a group called the council. Who's on the council? Look, I think it's just a fancy way of saying there's a bunch of Gordon security executives who nominate which faces go on the watch list,

and each of those faces then gets a kind of score assigned to it. I think there's been different scoring mechanisms over the years. Sometimes it's a 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, sometimes high number is bad, sometimes low number is bad. But, you know, this council kind of nominates faces, and then you're on the list. So what's the type of person who's in the system being watched? we do have some screenshots of people who are on the list.

Perfect. And here's someone who is described as being flagged as priority eight. Again, we're blurring out the face, I presume, for understandable privacy reasons, especially because this seems to be a small child. Yeah, this is a kid. This is from the sphere in October of 2023, like maybe hugging a parent. Yeah, it's not great. What in the fuck does this little girl have in her dossier that would cause her to be flagged by the system as an eight, priority eight?

Why does a little girl get into the system at all? Why is this person in Jim Dolan's biometric drift net? I don't know the answer. Knowing that your child might be in this surveillance system. Right. And who knows how long the date is being retained for? Genuinely unsettling, as the father of a dog. and also a person who did not know any of this was happening,

all kind of terrifying. But let's say this is a low-level potential threat. Who would be on the other end of that scale? Well, then as you move up the scale, right, you might get approached by garden security officers while you're in the building, and you might get a, you know, just a little talking to or just a warning that, hey, we're keeping an eye on you

and don't you try anything. And then at the very highest level, it's your band. You're not even allowed in the building. Now, here's somebody else who triggered an alert. This is a priority two. So this probably isn't the very top, but this is someone higher up, but one would assume.

This is a photo of a police officer, it seems. Yeah. I mean, it's nuts, man. This is from 2024, and this cop was in the facial recognition system. And this system has a... him in full dressing uniform. Why is he in the system at all? It's not clear, although we do know that this guy was a former employee of the Garden Security staff. Someone that they had worked with at some point. Yeah, and now he's in the system. So we've got a little girl, and we've got a cop.

But in your reporting and in your view now, having done five months of research into this, how representative is the system that we've now chronicled, how representative is Jim Dolan as a stand-in for what is happening across the sports industry. Is he the future? Yeah. I kind of think he's emblematic of what's going on right now. I mean, look, there's a grocery store that opened up around the corner from me that wants to run facial recognition on me while I'm picking up

Cheetos. You know, there are executives at every industry running private intelligence shops and running private security shops, and they're becoming more and more important. Every company has sort of gotten in in one way or the other into this surveillance capital as a model where they take your information, they take your fingerprint, they take your face, and then they either try to sell that data to someone else where they use that data to kind of micro-target you. And so in a lot of ways, I think Dolan may be a very particular character. He may be a man with a very particular set of grievances and history, but I think he's kind of the future.

I am now realizing that in some ways, James Dolan is also the perfect face for this problem because we've already sort of tested how much people get. give a shit. Right. If the guy with the pettiest grievances and the longest memory and the most desire to follow people, not around his building simply, but also around the country, is now in control of a database of children's faces and police officers' faces and fans' faces and none of us really know what they're doing or why we're there or how long we'll be there or what we did to deserve it.

Yeah. And he's not the only one. And so how did the council rule in my case? Pablo. Am I on the watch list? I regret to inform you that at least as of the other day, neither you nor I, nor my co-writer, are on the list. Oh, man. That is, I got to say, that is a profound relief as somebody who wants to attend Filipino

heritage night at the garden. Yeah. And also I think that I would not be surprised to not be true once this episode comes out. Yeah. I mean, one lesson that we've learned here, right, is that the list changes all the time. And it doesn't take much to put you on it. So if you're watching, James, as we can say that into the camera, I guess. If you're watching James, like and subscribe.

This has been Pablo Torre. Finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. And for more, read the full digital cover story over at Wired.com. We'll talk to you next time.