My thesis is that the surveillance state exists because it was too expensive for anyone other than state actors to create one. But the proliferation of cell phones, and their concomitant ability to record and distribute data is making it possible for individuals and small groups to do things like this rain forest project. One of the things I predict will happen is that at some point a big push will be made to prevent people from randomly disposing of their old phones, instead either rewarding them monetarily or requiring their disposal in an 'approved' way. At the recent visit to the equipment liquidator I sometimes buy from I saw a pallet with a box full of phones. All kinds from Nokia candybar phones to blackberries to off brand android phones. There had to be 2500 to 3000 phones in the box. I doubt they sold for more than breakage (0.03/lb). But a motivated individual could 'fix' that like this guy did. Buy them attach a solar power + battery source and cheap sim cards and doing nothing more than the phone was designed to do (record sound or take a picture, send an MMS message) Lots of interesting intelligence over a wide area could be acquired. Want to know who the drug dealers are in a neighborhood? Or who works during the day? Or which houses have nobody in them? You could do a lot taking 10 snapshots a day and sending them to a central server.
Clearly it's anathema to a control state to have that ability in the hands of someone outside their control, so I predict some mobilization against it, from the phone "trade in" that is too good to be true to new rules and regulations about running an unattended computing device with recording capabilities.