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. …