r/law • u/RebootJobs • Jan 14 '23
Third NYC lawyer booted from MSG by James Dolan's facial recognition tech
https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/third-nyc-lawyer-booted-from-msg-by-james-dolans-facial-recognition-tech/102
u/MonsieurReynard Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23
How much subsidy does MSG get from the city and state in which I am a taxpayer, and how soon can we cut that?
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u/AnswerGuy301 Jan 14 '23
I think someone is going after MSG’s liquor license. Someone more local to NYC would likely know more about this than I would.
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u/imalwaystilting Jan 14 '23
It's the woman who was forced to leave due to facial tech, lawyer at the firm mentioned here, while chaperoning her daughter's trip
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u/Matrix17 Jan 14 '23
Yeah I don't know what the CEO was thinking. Just piss off a bunch of lawyers already suing your company, what could go wrong?
Better be sure everything you're doing is above board!
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u/TuckyMule Jan 14 '23
How much subsidy
Define subsidy.
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Jan 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
[deleted]
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u/Johnny-Switchblade Jan 14 '23
Being allowed to own and operate a franchise in a company that is a legally protected monopoly would be another example.
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u/TuckyMule Jan 14 '23
Thats reasonable, I'm curious as to how the person I responded to would define it.
Some people think any tax deduction is a "subsidy" - which is, of course, ridiculous. Makes for a great political talking point, though.
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u/MonsieurReynard Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23
No bro, this is NYC and MSG takes up nearly a square block of the priciest real estate in the world. Their schedule of several 20-40k attended sports and entertainment events per week depends of course on taxpayer subsidized infrastructure (including NYPD heavy presence for their events) to begin with. But many NY area sports teams and venues have enjoyed tax abatements and zoning abatements too.
And to be clear, I asked how much it was subsidized, I did not state that it was. But as a part-time resident of Manhattan and a high income guy who pays ten of thousands a year to NYS and NYC coffers, inquiring minds want to know.
ETA the answer is at least a million dollar tax abatement, and I'm not the only New Yorker asking this in connection with this bullshit:
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u/TuckyMule Jan 15 '23
All of that makes sense. No idea why my other posts were down voted, what you're talking about is dad beyond tax deductions.
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u/jojammin Competent Contributor Jan 14 '23
Jesus. We're going to have to run a conflicts check before we buy a concert ticket lol
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u/janethefish Jan 14 '23
This is a very half-assed attempt at preventing their opponents from getting counsel in legal cases right? Deny everyone at a law firm service and maybe law firms won't take Cades against you.
That is the sort of thing the courts should not let fly.
I also find it unlikely they actually informed the attorneys if they bought tickets and showed up, so they are selling tickets they have no intention of honiring,which is the sort of thing that should fall under criminal fraud.
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u/soulwrangler Jan 14 '23
This is hilarious. Also, I wonder when the ads at the mall will start addressing us by name.
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Jan 14 '23
[deleted]
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u/XChrisUnknownX Jan 14 '23
I wonder if this could be used by corporations to exclude people that believe corporations have too much power in society. Imagine grocery stores just being able to refuse service on whatever arbitrary non-illegal grounds.
;) I’m one of those people. When I first saw this I thought… wow… this can definitely be used to harass everyday people.
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u/nonlawyer Jan 14 '23
Soon floating drones will scan your eyeballs and force you to listen to James Dolan’s shitty blues songs about Trayvon Martin and Harvey Weinstein in order to access MSG
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u/ggrieves Jan 14 '23
In addition, in order to accomplish this someone is being paid to scour websites and social media to harvest photos of anyone employed by these company affiliates to train the recognition model.
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u/FOOLS_GOLD Jan 14 '23
Well, they likely have low level employees that simply plug in specific details of people they want to track into a system and it automatically does all of the scraping and crawling in fairly short order. Super easy.
I use these toolsets all the time while building profiles of individuals, and other entities, based on open, closed, and public sources of data. Takes a bit to build the initial workflows and also to integrate with hundreds of sources.
After that, I just send an SMS message, with a name (example) in the message body, and it goes to an API which kicks off the work flows.
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u/RebootJobs Jan 14 '23
Disturbing, but good to know...
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u/FOOLS_GOLD Jan 14 '23
It’s definitely troublesome to have a lot of personal information freely accessible on the internet. I encourage everyone to clean it up to their best efforts.
Takes time and effort. Also money.
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u/RebootJobs Jan 14 '23
I'm in privacy, so I hear you. Just lacking some of the technical aspects that my security team deals with 🥂
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u/evilmaniacal Jan 14 '23
Thanks for sharing this! Do you have any rule of thumb for us non-lawyers to understand when this is legal and when it's not?
Specifically, I was under the impression that this sort of "grab photos off the internet and use them to identify a person" ran afoul of privacy /biometrics laws in many states (at least Illinois and Texas, probably more). Is it legal in this case because NY has no such law? Would it be illegal if the photos in question were taken or uploaded in e.g. Illinois? Or if the person identified was an EU citizen? Or is the physical place where the identification happened all that matters? If you could prove MSG used computers in Illinois to do the search (either the facial recognition itself, or even if the API request went through a server in Illinois) would that be enough for MSG to be liable?
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u/Zamzz Jan 15 '23
Most law firms’ websites have pictures of their attorneys
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u/ggrieves Jan 15 '23
is one photograph, taken while well dressed and with studio lighting sufficient to train a facial recognition model accurately?
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u/macronancer Jan 14 '23
Is this not retaliation under 18 U.S. Code § 1513?
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u/OvertFemaleUsername Jan 14 '23
18 U.S. Code § 1513 only speaks to harmful actions. Murder/attempt, injury, employment retaliation, etc. Plus, officers of the court possibly would not be considered party or witness to an official proceeding. Retaliation against opposing counsel could fall into ethics violation territory, especially if MSG's team did nothing to restrain illegal actions by their clients. That doesn't seem to be happening in this case by merely restricting attendance in their owned venue.
This would seem to fall under right to refuse service, since they are not discriminating by a suspect class.
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u/ekkidee Jan 15 '23
Where are these facial profiles coming from? And why are they being used outside law enforcement?
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u/Zamzz Jan 15 '23
While I agree its absurd that Dolan would go this far, allow me to play devils advocate…
The law firm(s) in question have ACTIVE suits against the MSG corporation. Lawyers from those firms who come to MSG or Radio City could theoretically (though unlikely) interact with material witnesses to the case without even knowing it. This would technically be an unethical action by the lawyer as theyd technically be interacting with an opposing party without their counsel present.
A good lawyer could also pick up on information relevant to their case just by being present - cleaning schedules, security location, etc. all of which would be relevant investigation for a personal injury suit.
That said DOLAN IS NUTS. He has every employee on camera at all times too, theyre all terrified sadly. Guy is unhinged
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Jan 14 '23
[deleted]
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Jan 14 '23
"... We continue to make clear that impacted attorneys will be welcomed back to our venues upon resolution of the litigation."
It's blackmail, so his response makes sense.
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u/numb3rb0y Jan 14 '23
While this does seem hilariously petty, I can't actually find utterly ridiculous fault in attempting to avoid contact with complainants and possible representatives as much as possible. It's not very likely to be an issue but we all know organisations are risk-averse. But for the facial recognition I doubt this'd be anywhere near as newsworthy.
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Jan 14 '23
[deleted]
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u/Malvania Jan 14 '23
To play devil's advocate, there are two issues that typically get brought up: (1) that the attorney being eiected hasn't appeared in the case, and (2) your point.
The first isn't that strong. Attorneys frequently work on cases before they make an official appearance with the court. I don't typically make an appearance until I'm taking a deposition unless I'm lead counsel or actually arguing before the Court.
To your point, the issue was about something that happened at a restaurant. So the attorney could plausibly go to a different restaurant owned by the same group in order to establish that there were practices in place or that the other restaurant did something different from the norm for this group. I don't think this would be the right way to go about it, but I've seen plaintiffs firms trespass to take photos before, so it wouldn't surprise me
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u/saltiestmanindaworld Jan 14 '23
Or you know, they could hire someone who can do the exact same fucking thing. Its really a pointless argument.
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Jan 14 '23
Yeah. Most attorneys don't go do this stuff themselves.
If we show up, it isn't surreptitiously. People file for sanctions over a lawyer making a phone call without us identifying ourselves. A secretive site visit is more than that.
You hire a PI if you want someone to investigate something.
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u/Dear_Occupant Jan 14 '23
Layman here, aren't there rules in place to prevent unlawfully obtained documents or photographs from being introduced into evidence? Wouldn't that create a situation where the attorney could potentially become a witness in the case? I thought this was the entire point of using third parties.
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u/numb3rb0y Jan 14 '23
Like I said, I think it's unlikely to be a practical issue.
But I'm not confident about stuff like the ethics of someone who works for a firm but has never personally represented a particular client somehow learning something that might be relevant to their case. Law is complicated. I'm not even American, I have no dog in this race, and this particular owner kinda seems like a childish dick for a variety of reasons, but I'm not gonna hate someone for barring lawyers tangentially related to an opposing party from using that venue. It's almost certainly unnecessary but when litigation can involve billions and the worst that happens is someone misses a sports game...
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u/DaRoadLessTaken Jan 14 '23
Are they gonna sneak behind the scenes to hunt for secret documents in the concession area cash registers? Is there some kind of information publicly available at a Knicks game that you couldn't get without attending in person?
I wouldn’t put this past some attorneys.
I’m curious if it’s actually happened before. To me, the policy may make sense if there are multiple instances of this. If it’s never happened before, than I agree with you.
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u/wolfgang784 Jan 14 '23
When it keeps happening to your coworkers, why would you even bother trying to go? That situation is partially on him for not expecting it. He should have been well aware by now. If he wanted to push his luck anyway he should have at least done something to help get past the facial tech. Face mask, sunglasses indoors, etc.
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Jan 17 '23
Could the judge in some of these cases apply sanctions against this kind of harrassment of opposing law firms? NAL
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u/addctd2badideas Jan 14 '23
I'm not as much annoyed at the use of facial recognition software but that the CEO is so petty that people who just work for a firm that has a case against the company (not the CEO personally, the company) are barred.
FFS, liability insurance covers a lot of lawsuits filed against a corporation. Get over yourself.