Benn Jordan longs for the days of tech that didn’t spy on you

Benn Jordan may have initially gained notoriety for his music as Flashbulb and later, reviewing synths and effects pedals on YouTube under Benn and Gear. But about five years ago, Benn decided to take his YouTube channel in a different direction. He didn’t stop covering music gear overnight, but as time progressed, his channel became more focused on science and technology investigations. He even turned the entire enterprise into a nonprofit.

While there will still be the occasional video focused on music or audio — say, poisoning AI music systems or storing data in bird song — lately Benn has been largely focused on the surveillance state. He’s uncovered glaring security flaws in Flock’s camera systems, demonstrated how easy it is to hack a Ring camera, and seemingly confirmed a conspiracy theory that Unitree’s robot dogs are secretly sending data back to servers in China.

In short, Benn Jordan has gone from being one of the best music gear YouTubers to one of the best cybersecurity YouTubers. He was kind enough to take some time away from proving all of our worst fears about government and corporate surveillance true, to answer our weekly questionnaire.

What is the first app you install on a new phone or computer? (Do not count pre-installed software like Gmail)
On a new Windows PC, Ninite. Which is basically like you giving me one wish and me wishing for more wishes. Ninite is a free tool that quickly installs a customizable list of things you’d spend the next few hours installing on a new PC.

What is one thing you wish you could change about your phone?

That it was easily unlockable and rootable.

What is your happy place online?

Strudel.cc. It’s a 100 percent free, powerful, and wonderfully documented musical programming language that runs completely in-browser. It’s an excellent way to procrastinate and even accidentally learn to code.

What is your favorite gadget you’ve ever owned?

The original Pebble Watch. It didn’t harvest my data or track anything. It told me the time and date, told me when I have a new message, and lasted a week on a single charge. Which happen to be the only three things I desire from a watch.

Which was the most disappointing?

The Amazon Echo Show (3rd gen). I only bought one for pentesting, but it’s an incredibly laggy and awkward-looking device that basically exists to spy on you, show you ads, and ask you to pay for features it was advertised to already have.

What creation are you most proud of?
At least on YouTube (which is probably what got me an invite to answer random questions for Verge): In 2022, a scammer pretending to be Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene reached out to me on Instagram, telling me he wanted to write a piece about my music. Knowing the real Andy Greene, I decided to just follow the scam as deep as I could and then tell Andy the story.
I thought it would be a video where I’d scam a scammer, but it ended up being a video about West African oppression, Sakawa culture, and at one point, I was literally drinking my own blood on a WhatsApp call with a Ghanaian witch doctor while sitting at Chili’s with my partner’s family.
The video didn’t get many views, but the whole thing kind of defined the structure of what my channel is now.

What is your current obsession?

Spectrometry and interferometry. Particularly relating to using extremely subtle changes in invisible light waves to pick up and demodulate sounds.

When was the last time you went somewhere without your phone?

I actually try to do this every day!

What do you think is worth splurging on?
A tripod. It’s hard to imagine what could possibly justify the huge price difference between a midrange tripod on Amazon and something like a Sachtler. It turns out that it’s extremely justifiable and, over a decade, probably more affordable than all the midrange ones you’ll be replacing or incrementally upgrading to and from.

What would the tagline for your biopic be?

“If Jon Hamm were for sale on Temu.”

What’s the last GIF or meme you used?
Not sure if this is a meme, but I always use the triangle diagram with an option for each corner, but you can only have two simultaneously.