A new video making the rounds online shows masked individuals tearing through a New York City subway station with power drills, wrecking the OMNY fare readers that millions of riders tap every day. According to the footage, which reports place at a Brooklyn station, the vandals also paint over security cameras before leaving flyers behind, while on-screen messages urge viewers to ride free. The clip was shared as an “anonymous submission” by activist Calla Walsh, a co-founder of Palestine Action US who says she is no longer a member of its successor group, Unity of Fields. The fare readers sit at the heart of the system that lets people in and collects the money that keeps trains and buses running, so the damage means repair costs and possible headaches for commuters. Nobody has publicly claimed responsibility by name, and the identities of the masked people remain unknown.

The flyers say OMNY, built by Cubic, is a military-grade surveillance system aimed at everyday commuters, and they claim it sends profits from public transit to military contractors linked to Israel’s operations in Gaza. Cubic is an American company that makes both transit fare technology and defense training systems, which is the link the flyers point to, but those allegations are the activists’ claims and not findings by any authority. Critics of the video call it the destruction of public property carried out in the name of “Free Palestine,” and they are demanding to know why police and transit officials have not stopped it. Similar attacks have happened before, including a 2024 action in which a group calling itself the Transit Liberation Front said it smashed ten OMNY machines across the city. No arrests had been publicly reported at the time of writing, and it is still unclear how the MTA and the NYPD plan to respond or how much the damage will cost.