New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will mark his inauguration with a public block party open to residents on January 1. But even before the celebration begins, the event has sparked debate—less over the festivities themselves and more over an unusually detailed list of prohibited items.
Alongside standard restrictions on weapons, explosives, fireworks, and illegal substances, the ban list also includes strollers and two pieces of consumer technology: Flipper Zero devices and Raspberry Pi computers. Both are legal, widely used tools that are rarely singled out in public-event security rules.
The Flipper Zero is a compact, handheld gadget capable of interacting with wireless signals such as key fobs, RFID cards, and Bluetooth devices. Often described as a “Swiss Army knife” for hacking, it is commonly used by security researchers and hobbyists. A Raspberry Pi, meanwhile, is a small, low-cost computer popular for coding, electronics projects, and basic software development…