WTF: Raspberry Pi Ban at New York Mayor's Inauguration
The ceremony puzzles makers: Alongside bicycles and umbrellas, Raspberry Pis are also considered dangerous items and are banned.
Anyone carrying a Raspberry Pi must stay outside: Some makers might be taken aback by the rules at the inauguration ceremony of New York's new mayor Zohran Mamdani this afternoon. One might ask what is stranger: Bringing a Raspberry Pi to a mayor's inauguration, or banning it at such an event.
For New York City Hall, however, it was clear: The versatile single-board computers had no place at the event. The Raspberry joins an unusual company on the list of prohibited items: bicycles, laser pointers, and the Flipper Zero are also not allowed.
Actually, these are largely the usual suspects for such an occasion, at least if you look at it more closely. The audience is expected to crowd the New York Broadway, leaving little space for a bicycle. An umbrella could block others' view when opened or become dangerous during altercations (and anyone who has enjoyed enough spy thrillers or knows the case of Georgi Markov will surely think of other scenarios).
And the Flipper Zero, essentially a hacking tool for your pocket, can record and replay radio signals from car keys, alarm systems, and the like – just one possible plausible reason why the responsible security authorities banned the device that evening.
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And that brings us to what also makes the makers at Adafruit so puzzled about this: Without additional hardware, at least for power supply, a Raspberry Pi isn't very useful. There is no official explanation for this exotic ban.
This leaves room for speculation: Did the city administration absolutely not want to underestimate the creativity of malicious tinkerers? Did the responsible official simply ask AI for Flipper-like gadgets? Security researcher Stefan Klatt has a different suspicion and commented on the incident on X: "How do you say you have no idea without saying it?"
(nen)
