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NYC Mayoral Inauguration bans Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero alongside explosives

blog.adafruit.com

61–70 of 236 posts

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

#61
post #39

Can anyone explain logic for beach balls and blankets?

People toss beach balls around and it's distracting.

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.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like programmers model the law as a programming language, while it only works like that in very limited contexts. 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.

> They said Raspberry PI, but the spirit of the rule is "electronic looking thing that we can't immediately determine the function of". If this expands beyond a single event, I look forward to the inevitable lawsuit, and wish those seeking to oppose such suppression the best of luck.

NY and 2nd Circuit Courts have upheld far more egregious rules and laws than this, there will be no lawsuit.

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

#63

I carried an RPi running a Meshtastic BBS around Def Con this year. I can kinda see why these combinations would make authorities nervous ("you have a computer-controlled radio what now?"), but the idea of getting arrested for toting around a souped up walkie talkie amuses me.

It doesn't say you'd be arrested, just the items aren't allowed.

True, but exactly how unallowed an item is can greatly affect how their presence is handled. If you get caught with one, is this closer to having an air horn at a baseball game or a pistol in an airport? Neither are allowed, but one of those would make your day an awful lot worse than the other.

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

#64

>New York City usually gets this right. It has decades of muscle memory for doing hard things in public, under pressure, without panicking. Not something I would say about Stop-And-Frisk city but whatever.

With A.I./ML and high def aerial and street video + other electronic signals you don’t need ineffective tools like stop and frisk.

They had the technology in Iraq to figure out where IEDs were coming from. (TF Odin)

They could also cut down on government fraud and all the homeless NGO waste/fraud. [1]

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.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1gl4SESu2o

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

#65
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.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how this became news. It's not weird at all for event security to have a discretionary rule for if you don't know what it is and its purpose isn't obvious then feel free to not allow it.

This just seems to be that but phrased weirdly.

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

#66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since smartphones are already locked down by their vendors, the cops have a point.

Smartphones need to remove their agnostic USB-C power source, otherwise nefarious parties will use it to power a radio jammer! 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.

> Smartphones need to remove their agnostic USB-C power source, otherwise nefarious parties will use it to power a radio jammer!

OTG SDRs usually come with power splitter cables to power the radio from a battery pack anyway :)

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Readily turned into a signal jammer? Do you know this or are you just guessing? Raspis are SBCs not tricorders from star trek. 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…

Literally the first result on Google gives a simple to use jammer that works out of the box. Hook up an external antenna and you're good to go. Plenty of more sophisticated options if you dig a bit more.

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

#68
All of the comments so far have been about

> le heckin' security theater targeting tinkerbros

and none addressing the elephant in the room of why Mamdani needs all of this security, or frankly, any security at all? Just a few years prior, he tweeted out #DefundThePolice, and of the NYPD specifically, suggested "Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence." And even though he's walked some of that back, he still supports dismantling the NYPD's Strategic Response Group (whose duties including counter terrorism response). You can be sure however free of a rein the city's population of crazy transients are given to assault, slash, or push others in front of oncoming subway trains, he and his family will remain safe.

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

#69
post #39

Can anyone explain logic for beach balls and blankets?

beach balls just cause havoc bouncing around and potentially knocking things over. they're a nuisance.

blankets tend to want to be 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.

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

#70
post #20

What's also hacker-unfriendly is giving all your hacker-friendly article's traffic to Cloudflare, and then letting Cloudflare block Tor exit nodes from reading your article.

I'm using Firefox on a Linux workstation (without Tor) and I still got the CAPTCHA. The statement "blog.adafruit.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding" is misleading at best. Shame on Cloudflare, this kind of dishonesty makes me not want to trust your RCA marketing pieces.
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