[ahartman00]

Landline phones had mics too :) How do we know that those could not be remotely activated? After all, we did not possess the same level of power to monitor the government back then. As noted somewhere above.

I personally think there is an age where people decide; everything that existed before now is useful and nice, and everything new is evil. Kind of a technological puberty.

[maxerickson]

The old ones had a mechanical switch that was easy to inspect.

Drop the handset on the recently inspected switch, the mic ain't connected to nothin'.