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NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

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Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#151

Post by whatshisface »

kube-system wrote: post #150
whatshisface wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that these items were thought to satisfy your item number two, while more dangerous items did not, indicates that someone's feeding bad information to security, or alternatively, that was not the criteria. There is also some indication of Mr. Robot style fantasies about the power of individual computers.

What do you think is missing?

If there was a legitimate purpose for banning SBCs (there is not), then all computers with wifi would have to be banned. The external fact is that raspis are not a security risk. The internal contradiction is that raspis are computers. It's their whole selling point - they're ordinary PCs.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#152

Post by Denvercoder9 »

kube-system wrote: post #142
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some smartphones are locked down by their vendors. There's plenty of options to get full root access on something that's for all intents and purposes a smartphone, especially if you don't particularly care about warranty and/or keeping commerical apps functional.

The radio on all commercially available smartphones are locked down to meet regulatory requirements and runs on an entirely different CPU from the Android OS that you might have root on.

The same's true for the radio on a Raspberry Pi, though.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#153

Post by dfxm12 »

Etheryte wrote: post #42
Apreche wrote: post #35

The cops made this list. The idea that a smartphone can do everything a Raspberry Pi can do, and more, is a concept so far beyond their level of understanding that the discussion is pointless.

This is not really accurate though. Both a Raspberry Pi and a Flipper Zero can easily and readily be turned into a signal jammer or spammer with off the shelf parts and nearly no technical skill. Modern smartphones are generally both more locked down and also don't come with an external antenna option.

Like the article asks, why ban these two specific brand name devices? If you're worried about signal jammers, why not communicate that you're banning, oh, I don't know, "signal jammers"?

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#154

Post by wakawaka28 »

nerdponx wrote: post #89
BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine believing that stop-and-frisk was.

Is digital stop in frisk run by a shadowy corporation better or worse than physical stop and frisk run by the police? Maybe it's better, but I'm not sure we should be ready to cheer it on either.

Well, a corporation can't arrest you on bullshit charges, much less so for the bullshit reason of resisting arrest.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#155

Post by dfxm12 »

afavour wrote: post #31

The language is unfortunately imprecise (or rather too precise) but I’d imagine this is simply allowing security staff discretion to refuse suspicious circuit board looking devices. They’re not going to be checking for brand names.

They would not allow suspicious looking PCB's in regardless. If that's what you wanted to communicate, you would just add something like "suspicious electronic device" to the list. It's still a legitimate question as to why these two brand names were specifically added to the list.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#156

Post by kube-system »

whatshisface wrote: post #151
kube-system wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is missing?

If there was a legitimate purpose for banning SBCs (there is not), then all computers with wifi would have to be banned. The external fact is that raspis are not a security risk. The internal contradiction is that raspis are computers. It's their whole selling point - they're ordinary PCs.

I don't think you understand the threat profile of a large public event. The typical threat to events like this are idiots who mimic crap they see on YouTube. Public safety isn't an exercise in evaluating every theoretical threat, because that list is too long to address with limited resources. It is an exercise in evaluating which threats are most commonly to be exploited, and the easiest to protect against. This is how you most effectively protect an event with limited resources. It is different than the theoretical threat evaluation that someone doing computer science might think about.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#157

Post by cindyllm »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #154
nerdponx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is digital stop in frisk run by a shadowy corporation better or worse than physical stop and frisk run by the police? Maybe it's better, but I'm not sure we should be ready to cheer it on either.

Well, a corporation can't arrest you on bullshit charges, much less so for the bullshit reason of resisting arrest.

[dead]

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#158

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #139
crazygringo wrote: post #103

It's not like they're banning them across all of NYC... it's just security at the inauguration event. "Large bags" are banned too. > 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 working security at the entrance supposed to check for a device's "behaviors or capabilities"? This is a quick visual inspec…

> Presumably, the cops are aware of previous disruption with these specific devices, or threats thereof. You're presuming a lot for a single board computer that's less powerful in every way than your laptop - even as a blunt object. Sometimes authorities make arbitrary and capricious rules: that's why they are celebrating an inauguration, not a corination. If things like this never happened, we would have no need for…

[deleted]

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#159

Post by whatshisface »

kube-system wrote: post #156
whatshisface wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a legitimate purpose for banning SBCs (there is not), then all computers with wifi would have to be banned. The external fact is that raspis are not a security risk. The internal contradiction is that raspis are computers. It's their whole selling point - they're ordinary PCs.

I don't think you understand the threat profile of a large public event. The typical threat to events like this are idiots who mimic crap they see on YouTube. Public safety isn't an exercise in evaluating every theoretical threat, because that list is too long to address with limited resources. It is an exercise in evaluating which threats are most commonly to be exploited, and the easiest to protect against. This is…

Raspberry pis are not a "likely threat," because they are not a threat. It's hard to get away from that fact when evaluating the absurdity of the ban.

Re: NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

#160

Post by kube-system »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #152
kube-system wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The radio on all commercially available smartphones are locked down to meet regulatory requirements and runs on an entirely different CPU from the Android OS that you might have root on.

The same's true for the radio on a Raspberry Pi, though.

True but they are commonly used to control other non-consumer (e.g. unregulated) radios via GPIO, and in POCs for threat exploitation demonstrations which are all over YouTube for idiots to mimic... and unlike phones they aren't carried around by almost everyone on a daily basis.
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