> The internet and cryptography changes that.
By Internet, I think you mean phonographs, magnetic tapes and pocket recorders.
Cryptography brings some of that back.
To get access to those, you needed warrants, and you didn't get to listen in on every conversation, only targeted conversations. On the Internet, you have full access to pretty much everything I've ever said to somebody.
They aren't equivalent.
Until very recently, most conversations were plausibly deniable, and off the record. The internet and cryptography changes that.
Edit: [Both plausibly deniable in the formal/cryptographic sense, and in the informal "You're misremembering, there's no record in writing of me saying that" sense]