As an intelligence and information gathering tool voice recording technology has given the professional investigator great service for decades now. Spy camera technology has made leaps and bounds over recent years, but have hidden cameras now taken the lead for this type of electronic surveillance task?

Can Voice Recorders Assist Every Investigation?

Ask anyone about spy equipment or surveillance and the average person on the street will probably default to discussing spy cameras. This fact should not really surprise because the exposure of the general population to covert surveillance equipment is normally as a result of news articles, TV shows or films, which by their very nature will invariably promote spy cameras. However, if you ask the surveillance expert, then other equipment will feature on their list of important evidence and intelligence gathering surveillance devices. probably one of the most important pieces of spy equipment in the investigators toolbox is the voice recorder.

Voice recorders have been around far longer than hidden cameras. The intelligence that they can help to gather will often provide enough information to provide a short cut for other surveillance techniques. Covertly recording a conversation may provide important leads to times, dates and locations of future events. The same recording may also provide names of parties involved and in addition, it is quite often possible to pick up on the mood of those involved in the conversation that has been recorded.

Voice Recorders are not restricted to a tape recorder or a digital dictaphone recorder. Technology has ensured that the latest voice recorders are incorporated into existing everyday items or even purpose built to look like inconspicuous everyday items. The sophisticated microphone technology now enables recording of conversations within a large radius of a voice recording device, which means that audio surveillance is made easy in large rooms. Recording sound takes far less power than recording video with sound or video alone. As a result, stand-alone covert recorders require smaller batteries to keep them powered for extended audio surveillance.

All of these facts mean that the voice recorder will always feature heavily in the investigators technology toolbox as an intelligence gathering tool. Video identification may be a necessity later in the inquiry, but audio recorders will always be worth considering to get a ‘foot hold’ in almost any case.