NYC's Inauguration Device Ban: Security Theater in Action

• By lowercasenumbers
security security-theater raspberry-pi flipper-zero technology-policy

NYC’s Inauguration Device Ban: Security Theater in Action

New York City’s incoming mayor will be sworn in tomorrow. The inauguration party is expected to stretch seven blocks down Broadway, with approximately 40,000 people in attendance. Standard items prohibited from the event include weapons, explosives, and drones.

And then it gets weird.

Raspberry Pis and Flipper Zeros are explicitly banned. Same category as guns and bombs. The stated concern? “Electronic mischief such as signal jamming”. Notably absent from the list of banned items are smartphones, laptops, $4 ESP32 boards and the much more powerful HackRF, which can transmit on frequencies the Flipper Zero can’t even dream of. Each of these devices can do as much or more than the banned Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. So this makes me wonder, do the event organizers have any idea what they are banning? And why ban specific brands. Any individual or group who is looking to cause some “electronic mischief” as the organizers put it, can easily recognize what devices to bring that are not explicitly prohibited.

What makes this worth writing about isn’t just the ban itself; it’s what happens when people who don’t understand technology try to regulate it. This isn’t the first ban we have seen, Canada tried to ban Flipper Zero last year to stop car theft, then quietly dropped it when the security community pointed out it could not be used to steal modern cars. Brazil also banned them, and is still seizing them at customs even without evidence a Flipper Zero was used in the commission of a crime.

The Ban

The official inauguration page lays out the prohibited items:

  • Large bags, backpacks, duffel bags
  • Weapons, fireworks, explosives
  • Drones or remote-controlled aerial devices
  • Strollers, coolers, chairs, blankets
  • Umbrellas, bicycles, scooters
  • Alcohol and illegal substances
  • Pets (service animals excepted)
  • Anything that could block other people’s view
  • Laser pens, bats, batons
  • Flipper Zero devices
  • Raspberry Pi devices

When I first saw this the last two immediately jumped out at me. They are not a category of items but specific brand name products. Being me, I immediately started thinking of loopholes; an Orange Pi isn’t explicitly prohibited while being functionally identical. The specificity of this ban is just strange. It is like banning “Jansport backpacks” instead of “backpacks”.

Why This Ban Doesn’t Work

The organizers stated they’re worried about “signal jamming” and RFID cloning. So let’s examine this ban through that lens.

Smartphones. Nearly every person in attendance will have one. Phones with NFC can clone access cards with apps like Mifare Classic Tool. They are faster than any Raspberry Pi ever made and can connect to cell towers, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS simultaneously.

Laptops. Also not banned. Have you ever tried performing a penetration test from a Raspberry Pi or other low-powered device? Sure you can do it but it is a much better experience from a laptop that is infinitely more capable. Tools like Aircrack-ng for WiFi deauthentication attacks. Packet capture. Evil twin access points. All the WiFi attacks people worry about from a Raspberry Pi work better from a proper laptop with a good wireless adapter.

ESP32 boards. Not banned. And you can buy one for $4. The ESP32 Marauder firmware turns it into a WiFi attack platform. It is specifically designed for the kind of “electronic mischief” they claim to be concerned about.

HackRF One. Again not banned. This was the first thing I thought of as a Flipper Zero alternative. The Flipper Zero can transmit on a narrow range around 433 MHz. A HackRF covers 1 MHz to 6 GHz. It can analyze GSM, GPS, aircraft transponders. If you’re worried about RF attacks, the HackRF is orders of magnitude more capable than the device you actually banned.

Here is the thing about signal jamming: it’s already a federal crime. The FCC doesn’t mess around. Penalties up to $112,500 per violation, plus criminal prosecution and device seizure. Banning Flipper Zero at an inauguration doesn’t add any legal protection that doesn’t already exist. More importantly, neither device can functionally jam signals. They don’t have the required power amplification. Real signal jammers are purpose-built, and they’re already illegal everywhere in the United States. Neither a Raspberry Pi nor a Flipper Zero can jam your cell signal any more than a flashlight can blind a lighthouse.

What Could Actually Work

New York City already knows how to do this. Times Square on New Year’s Eve, one day before the inauguration, is one of the most locked-down public events. They ban backpacks, drones, weapons, alcohol; not any specific brand names. They don’t ban “DJI drones”; they ban drones. They don’t ban “Osprey backpacks”, they ban large bags.

If there are concerns about RF interference, they can monitor it. Spectrum analyzers detect unauthorized transmissions. You catch the behavior, not the tool. Someone attempts to jam a frequency, from any device, and you know immediately. This is how professional event security actually works.

For critical communications, use dedicated secure networks. Event staff should use encrypted channels. The Secret Service doesn’t protect the President by banning Raspberry Pis from DC. They secure their own systems.

Ban the behavior, not the brand. “No unauthorized radio transmissions” covers every possible device. “No Flipper Zero” covers one product while leaving the door open for everything else. The irony here is that capability-based rules are easier to enforce. Event security doesn’t need to memorize product names or argue about whether an Orange Pi counts.

Conclusion

This ban won’t stop anyone determined to cause problems. Criminals will find a way to commit crimes. Banning specific devices just prevents people from learning. It stops a teenager from showing their friends something they built. It will stop a researcher from understanding what techniques the criminals are using and from creating a solution to stop them. Device bans impact the projects that make people good at security in the first place.

The pattern keeps repeating. Someone sees a device in an article or on the news and gets spooked. Without much thought reaches for a ban. Canada tried it. Brazil’s still trying it. And now New York. Two devices get added to a prohibited items list and they call it security. All while the actual threats walk right through the door in everyone’s pocket.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has spent over a decade getting computers into schools and teaching kids to build things. Flipper Zero, for all the TikTok hype, is a learning tool that’s introduced thousands to radio frequencies and hardware security. Banning them by name, while allowing objectively more capable devices, sends a message: we don’t understand this, and we’re not going to try.

That’s the real problem. Not this one event, but what it represents. When the people making security decisions can’t tell the difference between an educational single-board computer and an actual threat, we end up with rules that punish curiosity and protect nothing.