On a recent Wednesday night in Los Angeles, I was ready to buy a hot dog with my face. I was at the Intuit Dome, a 2 billion entertainment complex that opened earlier this month. Soon, it will be the home of the L.A. Clippers, but I was there to watch Olivia Rodrigo, queen of teen angst, perform a sold-out show. The arena was filled with people wearing purple cowboy hats and the same silver sequin miniskirt, all of us ready to scream-sing for two hours straight. But first, we needed food.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has sent a letter to MSG Entertainment, the owner and operator of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, asking for information about its use of facial recognition to deny entry to attorneys at firms representing its legal opponents. James's letter warns that the Orwellian policy may violate local, state and federal human rights laws, including those prohibiting retaliation. MSG Entertainment's facial recognition has been identifying and denying entry to lawyers from firms representing clients suing the company -- whether or not those attorneys are directly involved in the cases. The company, led by CEO James Dolan (who also owns the New York Knicks and Rangers), has defended the policy, framing it as an attempt to prevent evidence collection "outside proper litigation discovery channels." However, lawyers have called that rationale "ludicrous," criticizing the ban as a "transparent effort" to punish attorneys for suing them.

We at WIRED are winding down for the year and gearing up for what is sure to be an eventful 2023. This week, following a new surge in mayhem at Twitter, we dove into exactly why the public needs real-time flight tracking, even if Elon Musk claims it's the equivalent of doxing. The crucial transparency this publicly available data provides far outweighs the limited privacy value that censoring would give to the world's rich and powerful. Unfortunately, Musk's threats of legal action against the developer of the @ElonJet tracker are having broader chilling effects. Meanwhile, Iran's internet blackouts--a response to widespread civil rights protests--are sabotaging the country's economy, according to a new assessment from the US Department of State.