A mother of a Girl Scout was kicked out of the Rockettes recently after facial recognition software spotted her and gave her the boot because she is an attorney.
Kelly Conlon and her daughter visited the Big Apple the weekend after Thanksgiving after her daughter’s Girl Scout troop took a trip to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular show. But Conlon wasn’t allowed in the venue after Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s facial recognition technology identified Conlon. Security guards approached Conlon and removed her from the venue, NBC New York reported.
“It was pretty simultaneous, I think, to me, going through the metal detector, that I heard over an intercom or loudspeaker,” Conlon told NBC New York. “I heard them say ‘woman with long dark hair and a grey scarf’.”
Crazy: https://t.co/JW1y5fyHq9
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“I believe they said that ‘our recognition picked you up,'” Conlon reportedly recounted. (RELATED: Homeland Security Must ‘Immediately Stop’ Using Facial-Recognition AI, Civil Liberties Groups Say)
Conlon said the guards kicked her out noting she was an attorney at a New Jersey based law firm that has been involved in a several-year long personal injury litigation against a restaurant that is under MSG Entertainment, according to the report.
“They knew my name before I told them,” Conlon reportedly said. “They knew the firm I was associated with before I told them. And they told me I was not allowed to be there.”
“I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG,” Conlon told the outlet.
A spokesperson for MSG Entertainment said any attorney involved in litigation against the company is not permitted at MSG venues.
“MSG institute a straightforward policy that precludes attorney pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved. While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment. All impacted attorneys were notified of the policy, including Davis, Saperstein and Salomon, which was notified twice.”
Partner Sam Davis at Davis, Saperstein and Salomon said “this whole scheme is a pretext for doing collective punishment on adversaries who would dare sue MSG in their multi-billion dollar network,” according to NBC New York.
Davis said he will now be challenging MSG’s license with the State Liquor Authority, according to the report.
“The liquor license that MSG got requires them to admit members of the public, unless there are people who would be disruptive who constitute a security threat,” Davis reportedly said. “Taking a mother, separating a mother from her daughter and Girl Scouts she was watching over – and to do it under the pretext of protecting any disclosure of litigation information, is absolutely absurd. The fact they’re using facial recognition to do this is frightening. It’s un-American to do this.”
MSG said they are confident their policy complies with all laws.