NYC Mayoral Inauguration Bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero Alongside Explosives
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The drama unfolds as NYC's mayoral inauguration party sparks controversy by banning Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside more expected no-nos like explosives. Commenters swiftly point out that this isn't a government-wide ban, just a specific event restriction, with some poking fun at the enforcement challenges, like distinguishing between an allowed Orange Pi and a banned Raspberry Pi. As locals weigh in, Adafruit, a NYC-based company selling microboard computers, is mentioned as a potentially affected business, though it's unlikely to be impacted unless they set up shop inside the inauguration party. The thread buzzes with witty remarks and clarifications, highlighting the absurdity of overzealous security measures.
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By Government security apparatus = “by government”
People aren’t complaining that umbrellas and beach balls are also on that list. They’re just reacting to the headline without reading the article.
Which is why I make the distinction between “not allowed at an event” and “banned by the government”.
Their language here is imprecise and that’s crappy but the intent is clearly to ban little microboard computers, they’re just using “Raspberry Pi” to describe it.
These “bans” are actually just a list of prohibited items at a very specific event. Umbrellas are also on the list.
They said Raspberry PI, but the spirit of the rule is "electronic looking thing that we can't immediately determine the function of". You could probably show up with an unpopulated PCB and get turned away because it's green.
I look forward to the inevitable lawsuit, and wish those seeking to destroy this abomination of a law the best of luck.
You could also try American pie, apple pie (Hi mom) or perhaps freedom pi. A decent stars and stripes heat sink should be pretty easy to fiddle up, and probably exists already.
I have found several uses for mine which weren't in mind when I made my decision to purchase.
Not something I would say about Stop-And-Frisk city but whatever.
They had the technology in Iraq to figure out where IEDs were coming from.
They could also cut down on government fraud and all the homeless NGO waste/fraud.
We need people to vote in governments who are interested in rooting out fraud as well as other crimes, rather than those seeking political careers who would rather freeze wheels take a blind eye to things.
Imagine believing that this stuff is effective.
Once, my wife and I were stopped, but not frisked, and cited for riding bikes, on a sidewalk at 2AM on a stretch of Atlantic Ave that would kill you to ride on. It made no sense, until I found out that my neighbor and his friend had been murdered at a street party. There was a drag net out trying to find the killer and they stopped anyone for anything.
A tough city.
https://www.brennancenter.org/media/5670/download
Strongly suggests correlation but not causation.
Chicago started with similar conditions as NYC (30 murders per 100000 in 1991), but they didn't have no-nonsense mayors like Bloomberg and Rudy. So its murder rate now is still 5 times that of NYC.
Broken window policing and stop-and-frisk absolutely worked. Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional, but it also was highly effective.
And it was not entirely unsuccessful, but definitely much less effective than policing in NYC.
I read multiple articles from both conservative and progressive sources about the drop of crime in NYC. The evidence is decidedly mixed. "Broken windows" policies probably helped a lot during the 90-s but lost their efficacy by the early 2000-s. Stop-and-frisk probably reduced the rate of serious crimes, mostly through incidental arrests but undermined some of the community trust. It also was unconstitutional.
I obviously haven't read it completely yet, but I read the parts that mention "Broken Windows". So far they seem to basically affirm everything I said:
> Now Bratton had some success in Transit, and well-publicized success, because he decided to stop people from jumping over the turnstiles. It was rampant. They wound up locking up some guy who had like $10,000 and a gun and couldn't be bothered to pay the dollar subway fare. The idea was, if I keep these guys out of the system, crime will go down. And crime went down in Transit, which is why Bratton got Boston and why he got back here. It was like, "This guy might be on to something."
> Operation Alternative
> But you can use the Broken Windows theory. Stopping a guy for drinking beer gave you a chance to run him for a warrant. Is he wanted for a violent crime? Stopping a guy for pissing in the street gave you a chance to issue a summons. Which meant if he couldn't produce ID you could bring him into the station, run his prints, and then find out he was wanted for one of last week's shootings.
During the 80s CPD ran a torture warehouse. They are currently operating under court direction for their mass use of pre textual traffic stops.
I’m not buying your “just so” story about mayors or hard nosed policing being the difference.
I think they're more concerned with preventing a panic over any of the concerns about what someone can do with a Raspberry Pi.
This just seems to be that but phrased weirdly.
It's like someone watched Mr. Robot and determined their list of additional hacking tools from asking ChatGPT what tools Elliot would use.
In terms of actual knowledge, wifi chips, like the one on your laptop or a raspi do not have software settings for that. They are predominately defined by hardware and by opaque binary blobs the kernel developers have their hands full reverse engineering compatible interfaces for. In addition, electrical interference far beyond what a tiny communications radio is capable of can come from dangerous items such as microwaves, electric motors and nine volt batteries plus spools of wire.
There are USB On-the-Go compatible SDRs [1] that you can hook up to an Android phone that cost like $50 (don't know if there are any that would work with iOS though).
[1] https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-nano-t...
Like a General Electric AM/FM clock radio from 1983, and also my purple bike: It jams nothing.
Pretty soon we'll all be texting each other on tin cans tied together with string. Until one of the cops trips over our cables.
OTG SDRs usually come with power splitter cables to power the radio from a battery pack anyway :)
By that logic, I assume they've banned ski masks, skis, fake snow and pinecones. ;-)
Just an anecdote but I was screened several times in the airports (more after 9/11 because of... face) but never caught a pepper spray or other prohibited non obvious items carried accidentally.
with the help of which LLM(s) ?
blankets tend to want to laid out on the floor for people to sit on which takes up a lot of space causing havoc for foot traffic when people are not expecting to have to step over someone. also, they can be used to start fires. these are the same reasons they are no longer allowed at outdoor concert venues for specific types of shows.
People use blankets to claim more space than they need and sit when they should be standing.
Both of these are perfectly normal rules for big gatherings.
Also, people putting these regulations in place are not normal people but people that think about how people might cause mayhem. None of the things I mentioned were real threats, but they very easily could have been is the point.
The alarm clock wasn't an arduino project, the student took an alarm clock apart and put the insides into case, specifically so that it would look like a bomb, then brought it to school, and rather than receive detention and that be the end of it, the news went wild with it as a discrimination case.
These were cases of overreaction in the moment.
Maybe that's the real lesson here; these rules for the inaugural block party are not to secure the block from electronic interference, but as part of a system to manage the reactions of panicky, irrational people.
Some of the more niche/hobby transceivers could be used by a group of bad actors at an event, for comms that are less-monitorable than smartphones and mainstream COTS handheld transceivers.
And such devices hobby transceivers might not operate on the list of RF bands that would be jammed by authorities when there's a suspected terrorist situation.
Many of these devices have exposed PCBs (either general-purpose SBCs, or specialized). So, saying "no Raspberry Pi" could be an attempt to ban all exposed PCB devices. And "no Flipper Zero" is the non-exposed-PCB problematic device that everyone has also heard of.
Kudos to the people keeping the event safe, especially given all the recently emboldened bad actors right now, who might be attracted to the event.
For hobbyists, there are numerous opportunities to advocate for your right to, e.g., carry electronics hobbyist gadgets, or to wear an artistic blinking LED jewelry piece strapped to your chest. Some of those need help, while some other opportunities could be counterproductive to your cause.
> When a policy bans specific devices rather than behaviors or capabilities, it creates ambiguity for people on the ground.
To the contrary, how the heck is someone checking backpacks supposed to check for a device's "behaviors or capabilities"? This is a quick visual inspection, this reduces ambiguity.
Presumably, the cops are aware of previous disruption with these specific devices, or threats thereof. And it's not like they're going to say exactly what, nor should they, lest it give people ideas...
> Today it’s Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. Tomorrow it’s BeagleBone Blacks, Arduino Qs, ESP32 dev boards, Teensy boards, Pine64s, Orange Pis...
Which is totally fine. There's no legitimate purpose in bringing any of those to a high-profile political event. Drones, laser pens, and beach balls are prohibited too.
This is the stupidest thing to get mock-offended by.
Small-scale user programmable portable radios does not convey what Flipper Zero does.
Laughed so hard. That sarcasm is so sharp it might show up on next year's banned list.
(Yeah I’m planning some real terror)
what idiots
Adafruit's point on the banning of specific devices stands out as being particularly foolish. I doubt security would react well to any obvious cyberpunk cyberdeck build, regardless of the hardware inside.
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