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 inspection, this reduces ambiguity.
Presumably, the cops are aware of previous disruption with these specific devices, or threats thereof. And it's not like they're going to say exactly what, nor should they, lest it give people ideas...
> Today it’s Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. Tomorrow it’s BeagleBone Blacks, Arduino Qs, ESP32 dev boards, Teensy boards, Pine64s, Orange Pis...
Which is totally fine. There's no legitimate purpose in bringing any of those to a high-profile political event. Drones, laser pens, and beach balls are prohibited too.
Agreed. This comes off as self-absorbed and entitled - 'how dare the security team not recognize my ascended morality and technical genius! Suppose an evil hacker does plan to disrupt the event - the only thing that stops a bad guy with a Flipper Zero is a good guy with a Raspberry Pi running wireshark!'
Adafruit is headquartered in New York and selling raspberry pi is a big part of their business. Reading this as self absorbed or entitled is disingenuous. They're worried about their business & asking why these brand names are singled out is a legitimate question.
This isn't an exercise in cataloging all worldly items. The criteria for the list is very obviously:
[no legitimate purpose] + [identified as a potential threat or disturbance vector] + [described in a way useful for laypeople who will be consuming said list]
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.
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.
Idiots running script-kiddy exploits on any device is a threat. The list says "Raspberry Pi" because of the utility in communication to the parties reading the list, not because it is technically accurate.
Cops are going to turn you away from this event if you carry in something that looks like circuit boards and wires.
And? There’s a lot of things that people “can” do. The few seconds that someone is going through event security isn’t going to stop a competent attacker, nor is it reasonable to expect them to do that. They’re going to stop the most common attackers which are sloppy idiots.
>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 regular elections. :-)
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.
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.
Or… criminals were caught and remained incarcerated leaving rates low. A large part of crime is committed by repeat offenders. Catch and imprison them and crime drops. This is well supported by data.
Chicago started with similar conditions as NYC (30 murders per 100000 in 1991), but they didn't have no-nonsense mayors like Bloomberg and Rudy. So its murder rate now is still 5 times that of NYC.
Broken window policing and stop-and-frisk absolutely worked. Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional, but it also was highly effective.
An unmarked car pulls alongside you, all men are masked inside and the windows tinted. You're ready to fight back or run, but then it turns out it's the police attempting to harass and bully you. Wonderful.
Look up Sean Bell - not a stop a frisk, just an open fire.
Once, my wife and I were stopped, but not frisked, and cited for riding bikes, on a sidewalk at 2AM on a stretch of Atlantic Ave that would kill you to ride on. It made no sense, until I found out that my neighbor and his friend had been murdered at a street party. There was a drag net out trying to find the killer and they stopped anyone for anything.
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.
In addition to Cloudflare's usual nonsense (e.g., give us all the cleartext because reasons, and also unblock our bad-UX code that doubles as an additional tracker), it looks like Cloudflare here might also be blocking Tor exit nodes (either proactively, or in response to detected abuses from those addresses).
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.
Sibling comments have good points but in addition: there are a great many legitimate reasons to bring a phone to the inauguration and many fewer legitimate reasons to bring a Raspberry Pi. These guidelines aim to reduce risk, not remove it entirely.
Since NYC repealed its anti-mask law during Covid, that's no longer something that can be taken for granted. In another thread it came out that radio jammers weren't banned. It would fit in with the humor of it all if ski masks weren't banned.
I think someone or a group really motivated to cause harm will laugh at these rules.
Just an anecdote but I was screened several times in the airports (more after 9/11 because of... face) but never caught a pepper spray or other prohibited non obvious items carried accidentally.
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.
> Modern smartphones are generally both more locked down and also don't come with an external antenna option.
There are USB On-the-Go compatible SDRs [1] that you can hook up to an Android phone that cost like $50 (don't know if there are any that would work with iOS though).
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, electrical interference far beyond what a tiny communications radio is capable of can come from dangerous items such as microwaves, electric motors and nine volt batteries plus spools of wire.
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.
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"?
Any mobile computer can be easily and readily turned into a signal jammer/spammer with an off-the-shelf SDR. There is nothing particularly special about the Raspberry Pi. I didn't see laptops on the list.
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.
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.
It is trivial to get an older, unlocked cell phone that you can root. You then have a device equally or more powerful than a Raspberry Pi with built-in radios.
I can host a wifi router and a Raspberry Pi with a web server that then connect to my phone regardless of OS and now I can run anything remotely. You cannot lock down any OS that has a browser and wifi. I don't need root, just under $50 worth of equipment.
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.
Yeah, exposed circuit boards are things most people only see in three settings: (1) when one of their devices are broken, (2) bomb in a movie, or (3) it's the 00s.
I think they're more concerned with preventing a panic over any of the concerns about what someone can do with a Raspberry Pi.
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.
The reeks of someone new being in charge (at whatever level approves this list), and feeling compelled to "prove" themselves via a show of power - in this case, adding items to a prohibited list. As such behaviors go, this one is petty.
Adafruit's point on the banning of specific devices stands out as being particularly foolish. I doubt security would react well to any obvious cyberpunk cyberdeck build, regardless of the hardware inside.
Lots of products come with integrated rPis since they're so easy to work with and have good vendor support. I guess all those products are banned too lol.
I noticed that they didn't ban "walkie talkies" or "radio transceivers", and I wonder...
Some of the more niche/hobby transceivers could be used by a group of bad actors at an event, for comms that are less-monitorable than smartphones and mainstream COTS handheld transceivers.
And such hobby transceivers/transmitters might not operate on the list of RF bands that would be jammed by authorities when there's a suspected terrorist situation.
Many of these devices have exposed PCBs (either general-purpose SBCs, or specialized). So, saying "no Raspberry Pi" could be an attempt to ban all exposed PCB devices. And "no Flipper Zero" is the non-exposed-PCB problematic device that everyone has also heard of.
Kudos to the people keeping the event safe, especially given all the recently emboldened bad actors right now, who might be attracted to the event.
For hobbyists, there are numerous opportunities to advocate for your right to, e.g., carry electronics hobbyist gadgets, or to wear an artistic blinking LED jewelry piece strapped to your chest. Some of those opportunities need help, while some other opportunities could be counterproductive to your cause.
I brought a 5G Peplink modem (which has 4 external antennas) in my checked luggage and got "randomly searched" by TSA on both legs of a trip once, which I thought was pretty hilarious.
I used to travel with a case full of parts for work and just started leaving extra zipties inside because the TSA agents that would search it wouldn't always ziptie it back closed after they were done.
I've brought mini clusters of bare Pis many times before (and other strange contraptions with jumper wires all around), and the only time I was ever stopped for a deeper search was when I left my x-ray shielding bag for film in the same case with the mini cluster.
Very few mayors have as many constituents as NYC, though. So of all mayoral inaugurations, this one has among the most potential people thinking about it, even disregarding how on-the-national-stage the election played out.
True, they are expensive, but that build quality and the availability of firmwares to do what you are looking for with just a quick flash makes them handy AF for keeping in a pocket to play with.
I have found several uses for mine which weren't in mind when I made my decision to purchase.
Their language here is imprecise and that’s crappy but the intent is clearly to ban little microboard computers, they’re just using “Raspberry Pi” to describe it.
You could also try American pie, apple pie (Hi mom) or perhaps freedom pi. A decent stars and stripes heat sink should be pretty easy to fiddle up, and probably exists already.
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.
Somebody obviously raised the question in a meeting somewhere, and there's no incentive to be the guy who says, "Nah, that's perfectly safe" - and every incentive to CYA.
I feel like this isn’t the kind of thing that just shows up on normal people’s radars out of nowhere. There must be some precedent, maybe a bunch of kids recently showed up to a similar event with these items
lots of things. Remember the Cartoon Network PR stunt where they placed DIY LED "signs" of characters from a show around Boston not long after the bombing there? What about the kid in Texas that was accused of bringing a bomb to show his teacher his DIY electronics Arduino project? What about the Mr Robot episode using a RPi?
Also, people putting these regulations in place are not normal people but people that think about how people might cause mayhem. None of the things I mentioned were real threats, but they very easily could have been is the point.
i am the writer. which specific emotions are you asking me to mask? confusion? concern? expertise?
the blog is written by people who use these tools — raspberry pi, flipper zero — in classrooms, accessibility projects. occasionally puppet shows. when a policy names devices, brand names specifically, instead of the actual threat, i wrote about it. at least you cannot complain i am ai... oh way, a i adafruit industries ! PAID POST FOR BIG AI
if this is where you get your news, welcome. the weather is still up next.
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.
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.
Who cares about the Pi Zero? There's no umbrellas and no strollers/pushchairs/prams/etc. - and to add insult to injury you're not allowed booze as well.
Also, not seeing why someone would care - why are you bringing your Raspberry Pi to an inauguration? Or worse, your blatantly suspicious "Flipper Zero", which, quote:
> The Flipper Zero is a portable multi-functional Security device developed for interaction with access control systems. The device is able to read, copy, and emulate RFID and NFC tags, radio remotes, iButtons, and digital access keys. It also has a GPIO interface.
NYC (and other jurisdictions) have a long history of categorizing things as "not a weapon" so they can more strongly restrict them without 2A challenges.
This seems very amateur hour and likely to have the opposite of the intended effect, i.e. I expect there will be tons of Flipper Zeros that people bring as "jokes".
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.
Congratulations on your hiring for head of digital security for the inauguration of the mayor of New York City.
The mayor elect has drawn scrutiny from right wing agitators and there are creditable threats that some of the "angry twenty something tech bros" are going to attempt to disrupt the event or otherwise prank it.
As this event makes significant use of projectors and large digital displays, please advise the security (regular law enforcement officers that may not be familiar with the latest digital devices) for any objects that may be things that are likely inconspicuous but could be used to disrupt the event. Items that would be conspicuous in their use or have other legitimate use that the general public or credentialed reporters would be using should not be considered (e.g. laptops, cellphones).
These items will be added to the standard list of items prohibited at political events.
----
This is a bit of creative writing, but you could imagine it being fairly close to what the person who is hired to preform this role is faced with.
> 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.
Interesting. Adafruit is now on the list of sites I will no longer visit, given their locking down and harvesting visitor data, and explicitly preventing archive sites.
> 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 inspection, this reduces ambiguity.
Presumably, the cops are aware of previous disruption with these specific devices, or threats thereof. And it's not like they're going to say exactly what, nor should they, lest it give people ideas...
> Today it’s Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. Tomorrow it’s BeagleBone Blacks, Arduino Qs, ESP32 dev boards, Teensy boards, Pine64s, Orange Pis...
Which is totally fine. There's no legitimate purpose in bringing any of those to a high-profile political event. Drones, laser pens, and beach balls are prohibited too.
We should probably see to it that nobody brings any of those things in, as well.
Presumably there might be children (or very bored adults) at the event?
[no legitimate purpose] + [identified as a potential threat or disturbance vector] + [described in a way useful for laypeople who will be consuming said list]
Cops are going to turn you away from this event if you carry in something that looks like circuit boards and wires.
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 regular elections. :-)
It's like someone watched Mr. Robot and determined their list of additional hacking tools from asking ChatGPT what tools Elliot would use.
Not something I would say about Stop-And-Frisk city but whatever.
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
Imagine believing that this stuff is effective.
https://www.brennancenter.org/media/5670/download
Strongly suggests correlation but not causation.
Chicago started with similar conditions as NYC (30 murders per 100000 in 1991), but they didn't have no-nonsense mayors like Bloomberg and Rudy. So its murder rate now is still 5 times that of NYC.
Broken window policing and stop-and-frisk absolutely worked. Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional, but it also was highly effective.
Once, my wife and I were stopped, but not frisked, and cited for riding bikes, on a sidewalk at 2AM on a stretch of Atlantic Ave that would kill you to ride on. It made no sense, until I found out that my neighbor and his friend had been murdered at a street party. There was a drag net out trying to find the killer and they stopped anyone for anything.
A tough city.
By that logic, I assume they've banned ski masks, skis, fake snow and pinecones. ;-)
Just an anecdote but I was screened several times in the airports (more after 9/11 because of... face) but never caught a pepper spray or other prohibited non obvious items carried accidentally.
There are USB On-the-Go compatible SDRs [1] that you can hook up to an Android phone that cost like $50 (don't know if there are any that would work with iOS though).
[1] https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-nano-t... (this one doesn't support wifi frequencies, but this was off the top of my head)
Like a General Electric AM/FM clock radio from 1983, and also my purple bike: It jams nothing.
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, electrical interference far beyond what a tiny communications radio is capable of can come from dangerous items such as microwaves, electric motors and nine volt batteries plus spools of wire.
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.
OTG SDRs usually come with power splitter cables to power the radio from a battery pack anyway :)
with the help of which LLM(s) ?
I think they're more concerned with preventing a panic over any of the concerns about what someone can do with a Raspberry Pi.
This just seems to be that but phrased weirdly.
Adafruit's point on the banning of specific devices stands out as being particularly foolish. I doubt security would react well to any obvious cyberpunk cyberdeck build, regardless of the hardware inside.
Some of the more niche/hobby transceivers could be used by a group of bad actors at an event, for comms that are less-monitorable than smartphones and mainstream COTS handheld transceivers.
And such hobby transceivers/transmitters might not operate on the list of RF bands that would be jammed by authorities when there's a suspected terrorist situation.
Many of these devices have exposed PCBs (either general-purpose SBCs, or specialized). So, saying "no Raspberry Pi" could be an attempt to ban all exposed PCB devices. And "no Flipper Zero" is the non-exposed-PCB problematic device that everyone has also heard of.
Kudos to the people keeping the event safe, especially given all the recently emboldened bad actors right now, who might be attracted to the event.
For hobbyists, there are numerous opportunities to advocate for your right to, e.g., carry electronics hobbyist gadgets, or to wear an artistic blinking LED jewelry piece strapped to your chest. Some of those opportunities need help, while some other opportunities could be counterproductive to your cause.
I guess they don't want anyone to jam the GPIO headers into someone's eye.
I have found several uses for mine which weren't in mind when I made my decision to purchase.
Their language here is imprecise and that’s crappy but the intent is clearly to ban little microboard computers, they’re just using “Raspberry Pi” to describe it.
These “bans” are actually just a list of prohibited items at a very specific event. Umbrellas are also on the list.
You could also try American pie, apple pie (Hi mom) or perhaps freedom pi. A decent stars and stripes heat sink should be pretty easy to fiddle up, and probably exists already.
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.
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.
Also, people putting these regulations in place are not normal people but people that think about how people might cause mayhem. None of the things I mentioned were real threats, but they very easily could have been is the point.
Laughed so hard. That sarcasm is so sharp it might show up on next year's banned list.
Though I don't read Adafruit, so maybe this is a normal way of writing for them.
the blog is written by people who use these tools — raspberry pi, flipper zero — in classrooms, accessibility projects. occasionally puppet shows. when a policy names devices, brand names specifically, instead of the actual threat, i wrote about it. at least you cannot complain i am ai... oh way, a i adafruit industries ! PAID POST FOR BIG AI
if this is where you get your news, welcome. the weather is still up next.
Asking because I believe the Block Party organizers likely just handed a list to the NYPD instead of asking them for input.
Also, what is the expected training to NYPD street cops what is a RasPi or Flipper? Both come in all kinds of shapes, colors, and general appearance.
Far stretch, but this could be a subtle ploy to do get technologist (i.e., here) talk about this make it go viral.
Also, not seeing why someone would care - why are you bringing your Raspberry Pi to an inauguration? Or worse, your blatantly suspicious "Flipper Zero", which, quote:
> The Flipper Zero is a portable multi-functional Security device developed for interaction with access control systems. The device is able to read, copy, and emulate RFID and NFC tags, radio remotes, iButtons, and digital access keys. It also has a GPIO interface.
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.
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.
(I agree this is all ridiculous from all sides. Might as well join the circus with a cheap comment.)
Inspired by: https://youtu.be/3EFKJ9KaWGY
By Government security apparatus = “by government”
Congratulations on your hiring for head of digital security for the inauguration of the mayor of New York City.
The mayor elect has drawn scrutiny from right wing agitators and there are creditable threats that some of the "angry twenty something tech bros" are going to attempt to disrupt the event or otherwise prank it.
As this event makes significant use of projectors and large digital displays, please advise the security (regular law enforcement officers that may not be familiar with the latest digital devices) for any objects that may be things that are likely inconspicuous but could be used to disrupt the event. Items that would be conspicuous in their use or have other legitimate use that the general public or credentialed reporters would be using should not be considered (e.g. laptops, cellphones).
These items will be added to the standard list of items prohibited at political events.
----
This is a bit of creative writing, but you could imagine it being fairly close to what the person who is hired to preform this role is faced with.
what idiots
> 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.