NYC 'Ban the Scan' Bill Wins Mamdani, Council Majority

A New York City Council bill that would stop businesses open to the public from scanning customers' faces is suddenly moving. As Wired reported, Council Member Shahana Hanif's 'Ban the Scan,' Int. 213, has picked up backing from Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration, Samuel A.A. Levine, commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and 28 council co-sponsors, a majority of the 51-member body.

The specific grievance driving the coalition is Madison Square Garden. Under owner James Dolan, MSG has used facial recognition to identify lawyers whose firms had sued its parent company and eject them from events they had paid to attend. According to the Brooklyn Paper's coverage of the August 14 rally outside Moynihan Train Hall, advocates also allege MSG has compiled files tracking activists who protested the technology, and in June 2026 a breach stole roughly 26 million MSG customer records. 'Your face should not be a tool that a corporation can use to punish you,' Hanif said at the rally. Int. 213 would prohibit businesses open to the public from collecting or using customers' biometric information for surveillance and provide a private right of action, letting individuals sue.

For anyone selling or deploying face recognition into venues and retail, this is where the policy pressure now sits. New York City is the country's largest single-venue market, and a law that combines mayoral backing with a private cause of action is a much sharper business risk than the current notice-only regime. Two experts in our Who's Who directory shared the Wired piece, a small signal that the practitioner community is tracking this one.

A few things the coverage does not settle. None of the pieces I read give a vote date for Int. 213, spell out the damages available under the private right of action, or clarify whether the bill exempts law-enforcement or third-party security-vendor systems as distinct from a venue's own cameras. Dolan's side has not conceded that ejecting adverse-firm lawyers is unlawful in the first place, and MSG will almost certainly litigate.

If this passes anywhere close to its introduced form, expect ticketing and access-control vendors that lean on face matching to quietly rebuild around QR or NFC, and expect other blue-city councils to lift the text.