Security was always expected to be tight for the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Swift is, after all, one of the biggest stars in the world. And though Kelce isn’t anywhere near her level of fame, he is a well-known NFL player and so are most of his friends. So, all in all, the wedding was always going to be a who’s who of celebrity guests.
But reportedly, the couple also took steps to protect the privacy of their guests. A new Wired report indicates that Madison Square Garden temporarily disabled its on-site surveillance system during the wedding. Indeed, the report indicates that the venue reportedly locked security staff out of its camera network and facial recognition software for seven hours on July 2, the night of the rehearsal dinner, and again for their wedding ceremony on the 3rd.
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Wired’s acquired an internal memo that confirms the shutdown was the result of a “client privacy request.” But reportedly, this request isn’t normal. “It has never been done,” the outlet reported, despite the fact that the venue has held a great deal of big events.
Madison Square Garden is currently in legal proceedings against Wired over its reporting on the database. A rep for MSG even called the reporting “inaccurate and false.”
The security system reportedly runs on software called Genetec, with guests passing through biometric scanners as they enter, which allows them to be monitored from camera to camera. Guests at the Swift-Kelce nuptials reportedly bypassed scanners by going through a separate entrance, per celebrity.land.
According to Wired, MSG’s outside-facing cameras were left on throughout the Swift-Kelce nuptials.
This comes after the criminal hacker collective ShinyHunters leaked MSG’s internal “talent” database, which contained nearly 40,000 celebrities and gave some a ranking depending on their “risk level.” The database also tracked the celebrities’ race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Some of Swift’s and Kelce’s guests were already in the database. They had “low” risk scores assigned, including Selena Gomez and her husband Benny Blanco, Benson Boone, Ice Spice, TV host Michael Strahan, and Mariska Hargitay.
A source told Wire that if you’re a celebrity and you have a risk score, “you’ve done something in the publicity world, the social media world, that has caught the attention of the wrong people.” The database reportedly has entries dating back to December 2020 and includes updates as recent as early June of this year.
“It doesn’t have to be that serious. You could just be critical of the team or the place itself,” the source added. “You could post that you had a hard time getting in and you really didn’t like the way you were treated at one of the gates. Which is really nothing, right?”
The talent database also had 93 entries marked as LGBTQIA.
“I’ve never met James Dolan. I don’t know the higher-up leadership at Madison Square Garden. But, like, there does seem to be a bit of a pattern here,” said Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future. “They just seem overly interested in queer and trans people in their venue.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stylecaster.com ’
