Intel gathering

From hiding cameras in cigarette packets, books and radios to leaving messages in invisible ink: The secret 'James Bond' gadgets ASIO used to spy on Soviets and ordinary citizens

Big Brother was watching us for decades before governments had the technological power to track digital footprints and remotely record their citizens' every move. 

Without satellite monitoring, data mining and biometric measurement, intelligence agencies relied on primitive physical surveillance to keep an eye on suspicious individuals. 

Cold War spies really did hide tiny cameras inside books, radios and cigarette packets and they did sometimes communicate using invisible ink. 

A new exhibition of spy gadgetry, surveillance photographs and declassified documents lifts the veil on how Australia's secret agents have gone about their covert trade over the past century.

Spy: Espionage in Australia has just opened at the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University and features exhibits never previously publicly seen.