[somat]

It is an software defined radio with a nice interface built around it. Perhaps the nice interface has lowered the bar enough for it to now be in the crosshairs of the state, this has happened before, sometimes just making the tool easy enough for anybody to use is enough to make it illegal/controlled.

The point being the flipper does not do anything that is not possible with other tools, it just makes it easy.

[aeonik]

It's not actually an SDR, it just has a discerning collection of hardware radio modules on it. If it was a self contained SDR you would expect a much beefier processor and power draw from the device from all the digital signal processing.