Leaked documents have revealed that Madison Square Garden (MSG), the New York arena owned by Knicks proprietor Jim Dolan, maintained a surveillance database that flagged 93 celebrities as "LGBTQIA," including Ricky Martin, Phoebe Bridgers and Geese's Emily Green. The trove was published by a criminal hacker collective called ShinyHunters after MSG reportedly refused to meet its ransom demands, and it adds to earlier reporting by Wired that MSG's facial recognition technology had been used to monitor a trans woman's movements over a two-year period. The revelations matter because they suggest the arena's surveillance apparatus is being used to track people based on identity and personal expression rather than any clear security threat.

The database also assigned escalating risk scores — "flag", "low risk", "medium risk" and "high risk" — to various public figures, sometimes on the basis of social media posts that were merely critical of the venue or the team. Names cited include Edie Falco and Ben Stiller (low risk), Lily Allen and Morgan Wallen (medium risk) and rappers such as Freddie Gibbs and DaBaby (high risk), while Lil Tjay is marked as banned. A former MSG security executive, Donald Ingrasselino, previously sued the company, alleging that Dolan's chief security officer John Eversole was fixated on the surveilled trans woman, misgendering her and seeking to keep her "away from the players". Class action lawsuits are now mounting, and the leak also exposed internal emails and corporate information.