Beyond the privacy invasion this represents, isn’t there some limit to how obvious a concept is? People have been recording conversations surreptitiously since

Beyond the privacy invasion this represents, isn’t there some limit to how obvious a concept is? People have been recording conversations surreptitiously since the first audio recorder was invented, how can you patent something so obvious? I mean I taped my parents having an argument in the back seat with my humongous cassette recorder deck when I was young while sitting in the back seat? Was some kind of child genius? Can I claim prior art?