James Bond, Richard Nixon. . and Roosevelt?

The best-documented cases of individuals (rather than law enforcement officers, intelligence operatives, or private detectives) using surveillance recorders extensively come from the offices of U.S. Presidents. Although Franklin Roosevelt briefly used a special telephone recorder in the 1940s, after World War II the general availability of these machines helped them find their way into the Oval Office.

Truman used a wire recorder; Kennedy a dictation machine. The scandal that erupted over the infamous "Watergate Tapes," however, brought the matter to the public's attention. Nixon was an avid user of office dictation machines, but he also made recordings of telephone and office conversations without knowledge of the participants. He considered them a form of record-keeping, but when they became public they proved an embarrassment (Click here for the story of the Watergate tapes). Today the use of audio surveillance is arguably a minor issue compared to the massive use of video and internet surveillance. However, it is important to remember the deep roots that the surveillance have in our history. What is being done with technology today is not different in principle that what was done a century ago, but today it is undeniably more sophisticated. End