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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Calls For AI Slowdown

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 20:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The chief executive of Anthropic called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company's employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology. Dario Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too quick a pace for researchers to continue safely. "Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence -- not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up," Mr. Amodei said. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain." [...] "Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all," Mr. Amodei said. [...] In his essay on Saturday, Mr. Amodei suggested actions that the industry might take to slow down the pace of development. Mr. Amodei said all A.I. labs could agree to third-party technology assessments from "embedded evaluators," or outside specialists who can verify best safety practices across companies. He also suggested that countries with democratic governance systems coordinate to create safety standards, which could take the form of regulatory action. He added that it would probably require a global effort working with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to properly coordinate a slowdown. Mr. Amodei stressed in his essay that he still finds A.I. capable of bringing "incredible benefits" to humanity, including potentially curing diseases and accelerating economic growth. But even so, Mr. Amodei said the risks of A.I. were too great to not proceed with extreme caution. "The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy," Mr. Amodei wrote. "But I believe we owe it to humanity to try." Amodei's essay comes just hours after Bloomberg reported that Sam Altman told OpenAI employees the company is open to slowing the pace of AI development amid similar concerns.

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Automattic's Matt Mullenweg Claims He's Back 'In Control'

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 16:00
Less than 48 hours after Automattic's board placed Matt Mullenweg on leave, Mullenweg told employees he was back "in control" of the company and that the board was again in agreement. 404 Media cited Slack screenshots late Thursday evening where Mullenweg posted "Don't call it a comeback" and linked to LL Cool J's music video for "Mama Said Knock You Out." "Mullenweg's Slack profile picture currently shows him wearing a pirate hat and eyepatch," the report notes. From the report: "Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I'm in control of Automattic," Mullenweg wrote in the company-wide Announcements channel on Slack. "A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved." Mark Davies, Automattic's CFO who was set to act as interim CEO according to a statement from Automattic, had his Slack account deactivated as of at least Friday, sources told 404 Media and TechCrunch similarly reported. Davies, Mullenweg, and Automattic did not respond to 404 Media's requests for comment for this story. Techcrunch reported that Mullenweg told them a blog post is forthcoming. On Friday morning, Mullenweg published a blog post on his personal website, titled "Major Life Announcement." In it he announced he's buying a tugboat. "Anybody who's founded a company and had to find good stewards knows that no one will love a thing quite like the original owner, but sometimes you can find the perfect person to carry the torch," he wrote in the blog. He did not address the confusion surrounding his status at Automattic. The back-and-forth follows years of legal fights, layoffs, employee departures, and controversy surrounding Mullenweg's leadership.

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Built our own CRM — looking for beta testers before we officially hit the ground running

Hey everyone!

We’ve been building Cenvi.events, a CRM designed specifically with venues, restaurants, caterers, private chefs, and other event-based businesses in mind.
Before we really hit the ground running, I’d love to get the platform into the hands of some beta testers who can actually use it and give us honest feedback — what you like, what you don’t like, what’s missing, and what would make it more useful in your day-to-day workflow.
Cenvi currently helps businesses manage things like leads, customers, bookings, communication, contracts, and the overall sales/event process in one place.
But our bigger vision goes beyond just being a CRM. Down the road, Cenvi.events will also have a marketplace, giving businesses the opportunity to showcase and promote their venue, restaurant, catering company, services, etc. to people actively looking to book events.
We’re still early, so this is exactly when we want feedback. We’d rather build around what businesses actually need than assume we know everything.
If you own/manage a venue, restaurant, catering business, event company, or regularly work with a CRM and would be interested in testing it out, send me a DM!

submitted by /u/Altruistic_Lack8362
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LG Responds to TV Spying Allegations

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 12:00
LG is pushing back against reports that its smart TVs are "spying" on users, saying wake-word detection happens locally and that features such as Automatic Content Recognition, voice recognition, and interest-based ads are optional. But critics note that researchers found TVs keeping logs of ambient conversations, and LG's response "did not address broader concerns about how much data it collects, who it shares it with, the potential for bad actors to exploit its features, or the misleading way in which its privacy options are presented," reports The Verge. Here's an excerpt from LG's statement: Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work. As an industry leader, LG believes we have a responsibility to provide customers with clear and accurate information about how our smart TVs operate and the privacy controls available to them. We would like to clarify how our smart TVs operate and explain our approach to user privacy. LG smart TVs do not continuously record or transmit users' conversations. Speech-to-text processing begins only if a user activates a voice interaction through a supported wake-word feature or by pressing the voice (or AI) button on the remote control. Audio used for wake-word detection is processed locally on the TV and, if no wake word is detected, audio is not converted to text, stored, or transmitted. Voice-recognition results and related technical logs may be generated as part of processing a voice command. These records are associated with specific voice interactions and do not indicate continuous recording of conversations occurring outside an active voice recognition session. Speech-recognition results may be used to support voice-related features but are not uploaded later when the TV is offline or when connectivity is restored. Features such as Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional. These features are not enabled by default. Users can choose to enable these features and can manage or withdraw consent through TV settings. ACR uses audio fingerprinting technology using the TV's internal audio processor (not a speaker) to identify content and does not collect screenshots, screen recordings, video recordings, voice recordings, or other audio recordings from the TV. Where ACR is available and enabled, ACR-related information may be used for audience segmentation and viewing or audience trend analysis. Interest-based advertising and cross-device advertising require separate user consent through the applicable advertising-related agreements. Protecting user privacy is a fundamental principle in the design and operation of LG products and services. The statement goes on to "provide additional details on how LG smart TV features work, how information may be processed, what choices users have, and how LG continues to strengthen privacy, transparency, and security."

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CISA Adds 5 Actively Exploited Artifactory, ScreenConnect, and RouterOS Flaws to KEV

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added five security flaws impacting JFrog Artifactory, ConnectWise ScreenConnect, and MikroTik RouterOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following reports of active exploitation in the wild. Details of the vulnerabilities are as follows - CVE-2026-42016 (CVSS score: 8.1) - An incorrect authorization

Rescheduling an agreed callback: update the task or create a new one?

I’m building PitchWhip and looking at how callback changes should appear in a CRM.

Say a prospect asks for a call on Tuesday, then messages before Tuesday to move it to Thursday. No call has happened in between.

My instinct is to keep one open task, update it to Thursday, and retain the original date and the change in its history. Leaving both tasks open gives the rep two reminders. Closing Tuesday’s task and creating another might keep the history clearer, but could also muddy completion reporting.

If a call actually happened on Tuesday and ended with ‘try me Thursday’, I’d record that attempt and create a separate follow-up.

Does that match how your team works? Are there cases where moving the existing task causes problems with reporting, reassignment or accountability? Interested in which CRM you use and what breaks in practice.

submitted by /u/PitchWhipFounder
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CRM for schools

wibecoded CRM for schools where AI do all the work - chat with clients, make appointments, send reminders, move funnel, process payments, enroll clients, billing. Did this for my friends business as a pet project. Currently used by football academy and arts school. I'm now thinking to sell it as a product

submitted by /u/TransportationFree91
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Scientists Create a New Form of Ice At 2,357 Degrees Celsius

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 08:00
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from ScienceAlert: Scientists have now demonstrated one of the weirdest forms of ice yet -- under preposterous pressures up to 2.3 million atmospheres, and tremendous temperatures up to 2,630 kelvins (2,357 degrees Celsius, or 4,274 degrees Fahrenheit). [...] In their new experiments, a team led by physicist Alexis Forestier of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission subjected tiny samples of water to the sorts of extreme conditions expected in the interiors of ice giant planets. They squeezed the samples between the tips of diamonds to pressures as high as 230 gigapascals, while using lasers to heat them to thousands of degrees. That's 2.3 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level â" the pressure at the center of Earth, for context, is around 360 gigapascals. Then, using an extremely narrow beam of synchrotron X-rays, they probed for changes in the crystal structure of the ice. What emerged was a configuration predicted theoretically but never unambiguously observed in experiments: hexagonal close-packed, or hcp, ice. As the hcp crystal was heated, its expansion also showed a signature of superionic behavior, suggesting it entered the superionic state at around 1,700 kelvins. [Superionic ice is thought to exist deep inside Uranus and Neptune, where its unusual properties may play a role in generating the planets' equally unusual magnetic fields.] The findings have been published in Physical Review Letters.

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Priced four all-in-one platforms with usage fees included - the plan price is the smallest part of the bill

Most CRM comparison threads here end up arguing about plan prices, and for a couple of these platforms the plan price is the smallest part of the bill. I got tired of guessing, so I read the pricing pages and help centers for GoHighLevel, HubSpot, ClickFunnels and Kajabi and wrote down what each one actually costs.

Plan prices, the easy part:

GoHighLevel - $97/mo Starter, $297/mo Unlimited, $497/mo Agency Pro.

HubSpot - Marketing Hub Starter $20/mo per seat, capped at 1,000 contacts. Professional is $800/mo for 3 seats, plus a mandatory one-time $3,000 onboarding fee that isn't shown next to the price.

ClickFunnels - $97/mo monthly, $81/mo if you commit annually.

Kajabi - $179/mo Basic, $249/mo Growth, $499/mo Pro.

The part that isn't on any pricing page: GHL meters phone numbers, SMS, calls and email on top of the plan, and those rates only live in the help center. One modest client (1 number, 2,000 texts, 500 call minutes, 10k emails) adds roughly $30/mo. A2P registration to text US numbers is about $23 one time plus a small monthly fee, which is why a first bill usually looks worse than every bill after it.

HubSpot doesn't meter usage that way, but it's seat-priced, and the Starter to Professional jump is the real wall. $800/mo plus $3k onboarding lands exactly when you outgrow one seat or 1,000 contacts.

Worth saying for this sub specifically: ClickFunnels and Kajabi aren't really CRMs. Neither does sub-accounts or proper contact management, so if that's what you're shopping for they're not in the same category, they just get named in the same breath a lot.

Where I landed: if you're managing separate client accounts it's a GHL vs HubSpot question, and it comes down to seat count versus how much SMS and calling you actually do. If you're a single business with a real contact database and no heavy texting, GHL's metering mostly doesn't apply to you and the comparison looks completely different.

If your real bill on any of these looks different from this, I'd rather hear it than keep quoting numbers off a pricing page.

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When the Whole Company Adopts AI: What It Does to Your SOC

Over the past year, we watched a new class of alert appear in enterprise security operations centers and grow faster than anything else in the stream: alerts that were triggered by AI tools and agents. Not attacks against AI, but the ordinary, everyday footprint of an organization using it, from developers running coding agents and non-technical staff signing consumer AI tools into corporate

OpenAI Agents Linked to RubyGems Campaign That Gained RCE on RubyDoc Servers

The "major malicious attack" that targeted RubyGems in May 2026 was the work of a swarm of OpenAI agents, according to a new report published by researchers Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx. On May 12, Maciej Mensfeld, senior product manager for software supply chain security at Mend.io, disclosed details of a coordinated cyber attack that targeted the package manager for the

Little Mercury May Be Shrinking Faster Than Scientists Expected

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 04:00
A new study suggests Mercury may have shrunk about 30% more than scientists previously thought, losing as much as 14 miles in diameter as its interior cooled and contracted over billions of years. "That's significant for a planet barely 3,000 miles (4,900 kilometers) across," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Mercury's rough surface, continually reshaped by debris hurled from impact craters, may have hidden the true extent of the loss, according to the researchers whose findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The news comes one week after a pair of European and Japanese spacecraft shed its cruising platform and advanced toward Mercury. Known as BepiColombo, the linked craft are expected to enter orbit around Mercury in November before splitting up for a fuller survey. BepiColombo's laser instrument should confirm how much Mercury is withering as a result of internal cooling, said Gaku Nishiyama, the study's lead author who is taking part in the space mission. The shrinkage could be even more than his team is estimating based on measurements from NASA's Messenger spacecraft in the 2010s. Only one other spacecraft has ever visited Mercury, NASA's Mariner 10 in the 1970s.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Can Red-Light Therapy Treat Brain Injuries?

By: BeauHD
12 September 2026 at 00:00
The Athletic reports that researchers at the University of Utah are studying itPBM, a medical-grade red-light therapy that has shown promising signs of reducing brain inflammation and improving cognition, mood, anxiety, motor performance and neural connectivity. The report centers in part on former BYU football star and University of Utah adjunct professor Larry Carr, who says the treatment helped him after years of brain damage from repeated head impacts. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: ... The knife, the call, the diagnosis in 2013, would lead [Carr] on a life-changing mission -- one in which he and a team of researchers at the University of Utah would eventually compile research that one of those researchers, Elisabeth Wilde, Ph.D, co-director of the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Concussion Center, calls "striking." The treatment they are studying is called photobiomodulation therapy, or itPBM (intranasal transcranial PBM), also known as red-light therapy. It is different from the kind of superficial red-light usage one can find on social media skincare channels or at a wellness boutique, and its application is broader. The research includes multiple studies, and is not just focused on ex-football players, but on women and men in various walks of life. The group recently published their latest results in the Journal of Neurotrauma, based on a study that followed 26 BYU football players throughout a season, suggesting the treatment could "potentially safeguard neurological health without reduced playing time or contact exposure." Definitive clinical trials haven't been run yet; broader research and validation is required, and some in the field are skeptical. Carr acknowledges some have told him that it could be "too good to be true." Still, other outside experts who spoke with The Athletic call the findings promising. They make sure to caution: This is not a cure-all, and there is much more to be tested. But the findings have been compelling enough to justify more research and more speculation. Researchers say 14 peer-reviewed studies have linked itPBM with improvements in cognition, mood, anxiety, attention, executive function, motor performance, and other measures, while brain imaging has shown reduced inflammation and improved connectivity. One of the most striking findings mentioned in the report came from a study of 26 BYU football players during the 2021 season. Players who did not receive treatment developed significant, widespread brain inflammation, while the treated group showed no comparable increase and even demonstrated reduced inflammation in some brain regions. As researcher Michael Carr put it, "I believe our BYU data suggests the players' brains using itPBM are actually healthier after the season." He added: "That is a first." Carr also said treated participants showed fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and PTSD, along with faster processing, better sustained attention and stronger executive function. Researchers have also observed improvements in balance, motor control and grip strength. Taken together, the findings suggest itPBM may have a neuroprotective effect.

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Team of 3 using Apollo and HubSpot - where does Sales Navigator fit?

We’re a team of three in software development, using Apollo, LinkedIn and HubSpot.

I’m trying to get my head around where Sales Navigator fits into that setup when we’ve already got Apollo. For people using both, what are you actually doing in Sales Navigator that makes it worth having as well?

Is it finding the right people, researching accounts, keeping up with changes, or something else that becomes more useful once you’re working with it every day?

In the meantime, one thing we knew we wanted was our LinkedIn conversations and connection statuses in HubSpot, both for me individually and across the team.

There’s a detail here that matters even with three people: a contact being “connected” doesn’t tell you who they’re connected to. I might already know them while someone else on the team has a request pending. We wanted to be able to see that alongside the conversation history.

We built a Chrome extension called LinkSyncer to handle that for ourselves, then decided to turn it into a product. So, full disclosure, we’re the people behind it. It brings conversations we open on standard LinkedIn into HubSpot and tracks connection statuses for each teammate.

That still leaves the Sales Navigator question. I can see how it could fit alongside Apollo, but I’d like to understand what that looks like in practice for a small team.

If you kept Apollo but dropped Sales Navigator, what would you actually miss in your weekly workflow? An example of how you use the two together, and which Sales Navigator plan you’re on, would be really helpful.

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Looking to start freelancing as a Drupal developer — what are the current rates?

Hi everyone!

I'm a Drupal developer from Argentina and I'm considering starting to offer my services as a freelance developer, mainly working with clients from the US or other English-speaking markets.

I have 5+ years of hands-on Drupal experience, working with custom modules, content types, hooks/events, custom blocks, Layout Builder, Twig/CSS, SDC/Storybook, integrations, caching and performance optimization. I also have a broader Full-Stack background with React, Next.js, Node.js/NestJS, PHP/Laravel, Docker, AWS and CI/CD.

I've been working remotely with US-based teams, but most of my current work is through a company rather than directly with clients. So I'm trying to understand what the current freelance market looks like for Drupal developers.

A few questions for those of you already freelancing:

  • What hourly rate would be reasonable for someone with my experience?
  • What rates are you currently charging or seeing in the market?
  • Is it realistic to get freelance work with basic spoken English but good written English, especially for remote work?
  • How important is spoken English in your experience? Are most interactions with clients meetings, or is a lot of the communication done asynchronously through Slack/email/tickets?

I'm not necessarily looking to charge US senior rates from day one. I'd rather start with a reasonable rate, build some direct client experience and gradually increase it.

I'd really appreciate any advice or experiences you can share. Thanks!

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Male Fruit Fly Brain Trained to Play Doom

By: BeauHD
11 September 2026 at 20:00
Last week, Google announced that it managed to produce a detailed 3D reconstruction of an adult male fruit fly's brain and central nervous system. A few days later a software engineer at Coinbase said the fly brain was being trained to play the original Doom. "Each Doom frame stimulates sensory neurons," says Alex Wormuth. "Neural activity is mapped to game controls. Damage triggers a stimulus to two PPL101 dopamine cells as reinforcement." Since then, the digital brain model has been repurposed to control other games like Beat Saber and Super Mario 64. PC Gamer reports: You can even watch the fruit fly play in real time via Wormuth's website, and it not only shows the point of view in Doom, but can also show a third-person render of the fly going around Doom maps. As of the time of writing, the fly is on round 6385 and, well, it's not very good. Sorry, fly. But modders aren't done here. They have also somehow managed to make the fruit fly play Beat Saber, and play it pretty well. Lyra Bubbles on X has used the brain and replays of a song in Beat Saber to teach the fruit fly where to hit and why, via Reinforcement Learning. That does mean it's not organically reacting to the notes popping up on screen, but it is receiving input and responding to stimuli. Lyra says, "Further training is to reduce reliance on external signals and allow it to play fully reactively with no input data." And, after "pivoting to fly engineering in 2026", Jessica Paquette also shared on X their experience running the digital fly brain through Super Mario 64. If you think that is all the game's modders made the fruit fly play, think again, as YouTuber Ro0oney even put it in Minecraft. But this time, Ro0oney used Flywire.AI, a similar project made in collaboration with Princeton University. The number of neurons are different (160,000+ vs 139,255), and Google analyzed a male brain whilst Flywire analyzed a female brain, but the basic idea is the same.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Any CRM founders here currently preparing for SOC 2?

We have a SOC 2 readiness kit with policy templates, a checklist, and an evidence tracker for SaaS companies preparing for SOC 2.

If you’re building or running a CRM and customers are starting to ask about SOC 2, or you’re preparing for an audit and need a structured way to get ready, feel free to reach out.

submitted by /u/No-Entertainer8410
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PlayStation Ditched Hideo Kojima's 'Physint' on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines

By: BeauHD
11 September 2026 at 17:00
Sony reportedly pulled PlayStation funding from Hideo Kojima's upcoming espionage game Physint over concerns about its ballooning budget, missed deadlines, profitability, and the fact that it would not remain permanently exclusive to PlayStation. Kojima Productions has since struck a deal with Xbox, which plans to publish the game on both Xbox and PC. It's also secured film and television rights. Bloomberg reports: The new game, Physint, hasn't yet been shown publicly but excited fans when it was announced two years ago with its promise of returning to the "espionage action" genre Kojima pioneered with Metal Gear Solid, the series that propelled him to industry stardom. Kojima surprised fans this week when he announced he would be publishing Physint with PlayStation's biggest rival, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox. On Wednesday night, Kojima wrote on social media that over the summer his company had "unexpectedly received notice" that PlayStation was pulling out of funding the game. "Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions," he wrote. "Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner." PlayStation also addressed the split on social media, saying it had made the "difficult decision to step away." Microsoft said it was "honored" that Kojima chose Xbox and that the two teams plan to collaborate beyond games on films and television, too. [...] The decision to part ways with Kojima is a significant move for PlayStation that may have ripple effects. [...] One key factor is the PC platform, where the Death Stranding games have generated some revenue. Earlier this year, Sony decided it will no longer release single-player PlayStation games on PC, Bloomberg reported. Sony would therefore not benefit when Kojima Productions released a PC version of Physint on its own or with a different publisher, as it did for the first Death Stranding. But Xbox releases all of its games on PCs and plans to publish Physint on PC and Xbox, said the people. "Betting on Kojima-san is an easy call," said an Xbox spokesperson. "We believe in his team's ability to build AAA games with groundbreaking, new IP and we believe in OD, Physint, and our growing partnership."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Legislators Complain About Secretive British Court and Apple Encryption

By: BeauHD
11 September 2026 at 15:00
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: A bipartisan pair of American politicians is telling Britain's most secretive court to stop hiding its handling of Apple's legal fight against a government demand to break into its customers' encrypted data, warning that Whitehall's taste for secrecy is 'needlessly' straining relations between the two allies. The letter (PDF), shared with the Guardian ahead of being sent to the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) on Friday, is signed by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the Republican congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio. The row dates back to January 2025, when the Home Office served Apple with a technical capability notice under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence. The UK government demanded that Apple provide a mechanism to access encrypted iCloud backups worldwide, a call the company met by withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection encryption feature from UK users the following month. Apple's challenge to that order at the IPT was later thrown out after the Home Office withdrew the original notice and issued a narrower one targeting only British users' data. "It is wholly inappropriate for a foreign executive body to attempt to dictate the distribution of powers within the US government, nor should it be permitted to use secrecy directives under the Investigatory Powers Act to frustrate Article I powers under the US Constitution," the pair wrote. Wyden and Davidson write that Congress "is not only a co-equal branch of government, it is the First Branch," and argue that no government can be allowed to place "its demands beyond the reach of legislative inquiry." "The UK government," they write, "cannot champion legislative oversight at home while using administrative gag orders to kneecap the constitutional authority of the US Congress."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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