Recently I placed an empty cardboard box in the center of my preschool classroom of 4-year-olds. No label. No instructions. No purpose given. A few years ago, that simple box would have instantly transformed into something magical — a castle, a race car, a pirate ship, a cozy home for tiny animals. Instead, my students stood around it, waiting. One finally asked, “What is it supposed to be?”

In that moment, I realized something deeper than a simple change in play had occurred. When a box is no longer a castle, it isn’t just imagination that is missing, it is wonder. And in a world filled with screens, schedules and endless stimulation, wonder no longer appears on its own. It must now be intentionally restored.

Children today are just as bright, curious and capable as ever. What has changed is the way they engage with the world. Many of my students now hesitate to begin open-ended play without direct instruction. They wait for something to be defined for them instead of defining it themselves.

I often see children repeating lines from television shows or mimicking characters from online videos instead of creating their own stories. The pause before pretend play is longer. The ideas come slower. The confidence to imagine feels weaker.

This is not a sign of laziness or lack of intelligence. It is simply a reflection of the environment they are growing up in, one that is fast paced, highly structured and heavily influenced by screens. When children spend more time consuming content than creating it, the part of the brain responsible for imagination gets less opportunity to grow. Like any skill, imagination weakens when it is not practiced regularly.

Ready-Made Creations

Technology is not the enemy. Screens can teach, connect, entertain and inform. Many children learn letters, numbers, languages and songs through digital tools. But when screens begin to replace play instead of supporting it, something essential begins to disappear.

Screens provide ready-made worlds: characters, voices, sounds, colors and stories are already created. There is nothing left for the child to imagine. They move from being creators to being viewers.

In the past, boredom often led to creativity. A child with “nothing to do” would invent something. A stick became a wand. A blanket became a cape. A cardboard box became a castle. Today, even a few seconds of boredom is quickly filled with a device.

The silence that once gave birth to imagination is replaced by noise, movement and constant stimulation. Over time, children become more comfortable being entertained than entertaining themselves. Wonder does not disappear; it simply falls asleep.

Why Wonder Matters

Imagination is not just child’s play. It is essential to development. When children pretend, they practice:

• communication and language
• emotional expression
• empathy and understanding
• planning and problem-solving
• cooperation and negotiation
• confidence and independence

Wonder teaches children how to think, not just what to think. In a world that demands creativity, adaptability and emotional intelligence, imagination is not optional. It is foundational.

Restoring Wonder — Together

The responsibility to protect imagination does not belong to teachers alone. Nor does it belong only to parents. It lives in the space between them.

Restoring wonder in children requires partnership. When home and school move with the same intention, magic begins to return. Children feel safe enough to imagine freely again. Imagination does not return because we demand it. It returns when the adults in a child’s life agree to protect the space for it together. Here are simple yet powerful ways families and educators can work together:

• Make space for unstructured play. Children need time with no agenda, no instructions, and no screen. Even thirty minutes a day can make a difference.
• Offer open-ended materials. Boxes, fabric, paper, paint, blocks, tape, water, and natural items invite imagination far more than expensive, pre-designed toys.
• Let boredom exist. When a child says “I’m bored,” it is not a problem to fix. It is an invitation to imagine. Instead of offering a screen, try asking: “What could you do?”
• Ask open-ended questions. Instead of correcting, wonder with them: “What is this becoming?” Who lives here?” “What happens next in your story?”
• Create screen-free moments. Choose a time each day when screens are put away. Protect it as imagination time.
• Communicate across home and school. A simple conversation with the teacher helps: “What is my child interested in lately?” “What do you see them creating in class?” “How can we support that at home?”

A Quiet Call Back to Wonder

The world is louder now. Faster. More digital than ever before. But a box is still a box. A child is still a child. And inside every child, a castle is still waiting to be built.

Wonder is not gone. It is waiting.

Waiting for silence. Waiting for time. Waiting for trust. Waiting for space.

Perhaps the real question is not what children have lost, but what we, as adults, are willing to return to them. And maybe the moment we choose to slow down, to listen, and to leave a box unlabeled, we will begin to see castles rising again.

Manna already has a number of commercial tie-ups in Ireland with the likes of Uber, JustEat and Deliveroo.

Manna’s drones are simulating deliveries from Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital to the Connolly Hospital, in a trial that hopes to encourage drone adoption in healthcare.

The trio of partners want to demonstrate the potential in transporting blood and other life-saving medical supplies speedily using small aerial vehicles.

Manna has previously trialled transporting medical supplies with the UK’s National Health Service. According to the business, the trial showed transportation times between the Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital in London reduced by 28 minutes when drones were used.

Last year, in a joint project in collaboration with the HSE, the National Ambulance Service and Community First Responders, Manna demonstrated how defibrillators could be delivered to homes much faster using drones than ambulances. While a previous study in Sweden found that drones beat ambulances to the patient 70pc of the time.

“Today’s simulation is a glimpse of that future,” commented Rotunda Hospital’s laboratory manager John O’ Loughlin. “The ability to move blood, samples and other critical supplies between hospitals at speed could transform how we support emergency and planned care in Ireland.”

Manna’s CEO Bobby Healy added: “We’ve proven this technology works at scale. What we’re showing now is how it can be applied in healthcare where minutes matter. Ireland is well-placed to lead the way, and this simulation is about building trust and momentum toward full integration.”

Manna already has a number of commercial tie-ups in Ireland with the likes of Uber, JustEat and Deliveroo to deliver food and other small goods to suburban communities.

Last year, it expanded its focus from Dublin and announced an entry into Cork’s airspace. Overall, it claims to have made more than 250,000 successful deliveries to date.

The 2019-founded company announced a $30m raise last year. Its backers include Tapestry VC, Molten Ventures, Coca-Cola and Dynamo Ventures.

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When the user asks “What enemy military unit is in the region?” the AIP Assistant guesses that it’s “likely an armor attack battalion based on the pattern of the equipment.” This prompts the analyst to request a MQ-9 Reaper drone to survey the scene. They then ask the AIP Assistant to “generate 3 courses of action to target this enemy equipment,” and within moments, the assistant suggests attacking the unit with either an “air asset,” a “long range artillery,” or a “tactical team.” The user tells the assistant to send these options to a fictional commander, who ultimately chooses the tactical team.

The final steps play out quickly: The analyst asks the AIP Assistant to “analyze the battlefield,” then “generate a route” for troops to reach the enemy, and finally “assign jammers” to sabotage their communications equipment. Within seconds, the analyst gives the battle plan a final review and orders the troops to mobilize.

In this scenario, Claude would be the “voice” of the AIP Assistant, and the “reasoning” it uses to generate responses. Other AIP demos show users interacting with large language models in much the same way. In a blog published last week, for example, Palantir detailed how NATO, a Maven Smart Systems customer, could use an AIP Agent within the tool.

In one graphic, Palantir shows how a third-party defense contractor can select from several of Palantir’s built-in AI models, including different versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama. The user selects OpenAI’s GPT 4.1, but seemingly, this could be where a soldier would also have the option to pick Claude instead.

An analyst then views a digital map showing the locations of troops and weapons. In a panel labeled “COA” (courses of action), they click a button that prompts a tool powered by GPT-4.1 to generate five possible military strategies, including one called “Support-by-Fire-then-Penetration-Shock-and-Destruction.”

Another example shows how the system could help interpret satellite imagery: The analyst selects three tanker truck detections on a map, loads them into the AIP Agent’s chat interface, and asks it to “interpret” the imagery and suggest options for what to do next.

Claude may also be used by the military to create intelligence assessments that may inform strike planning later down the line. In June 2025, WIRED viewed a demonstration given by Kunaal Sharma, a public sector lead at Anthropic, showing how the enterprise version of Claude could be used to generate “advanced” reports about a real Ukrainian drone strike dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web.” In the demo, Sharma explained, Claude was relying only on publicly available information. But by partnering with Palantir, he said, the federal government can also pull from internal datasets.

“This is typically something that I might sit for like five hours with a cup of coffee, and read Google, and go into think tanks, and start writing reports and writing a citation, et cetera, et cetera,” Sharma said. “But I don’t have that kind of time.”

In the demo, Sharma asked Claude to create an “interactive dashboard” with information about Operation Spider’s Web, and then translate it into “object types” that could be analyzed in Foundry, one of Palantir’s off-the-shelf software products. He also asked Claude to write a detailed analysis of recent developments in Russia’s border provinces, as well as a 200-word synopsis of the operation’s “military and political effects.”

“Frankly, I’ve been reading these types of things for twenty years—I used to write them, I used to be an academic myself,” Sharma said, “This is actually pretty good.”

The dating app unveiled Bee at its Q4 earnings alongside a broader ‘Bumble 2.0’ overhaul, as the company attempts to reverse years of declining user numbers by replacing gamified swiping with AI-driven compatibility.

There is a version of the future, Bumble’s version, at least, where you never swipe on a dating app again. Instead, you have a private conversation with an AI that learns what you actually want from a relationship, sits quietly in the background, and surfaces one carefully chosen match with a note explaining exactly why the two of you belong together.

That is the pitch behind Bee, the AI dating assistant Bumble reveled at its fourth-quarter earnings on 11 March 2026.

The product is still in internal testing, with a public beta coming “soon” according to founder and chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd, who described it to investors as a personal matchmaker that learns users’ values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle, and dating intentions through private chats.

Once Bee identifies two people it considers compatible, both are notified in the app with a summary of why they make a strong match. From there, the conversation and the date are up to the humans.

The launch vehicle for Bee is a new in-app experience called Dates. Users opt in, complete an onboarding conversation with Bee via text or voice, and then wait for a curated introduction rather than scrolling through an open pool of profiles.

Bumble says future applications of Bee will extend to date-night suggestions based on shared interests, and an optional anonymous feedback loop from previous matches to help the system and the user understand what went wrong.

Bee is the headline act in a broader product reset, Bumble is calling Bumble 2.0. Alongside the AI assistant, the company is experimenting with removing the traditional left-right swipe mechanic entirely in select markets, replacing it with what it calls chapter-based profiles, structured layouts that let users showcase different dimensions of their lives, from work and hobbies to values and plans.

Wolfe Herd told investors that this richer format will feed the app’s AI with better signals and give members more texture to respond to than a single profile photo.

“We will be introducing more dynamic ways for somebody to express interest in your story, rather than just your profile, and this is going to drive more dynamic engagement, spark better conversation, and ultimately drive better KPIs across the board.”

The urgency behind Bumble 2.0 is not hard to read. Full-year 2025 revenue fell 10% to $966 million, paid users declined 11.5%, and the Q4 quarter alone saw revenue drop nearly 15% year on year to $224.2 million.

The company laid off 30% of its workforce in mid-2025, and Wolfe Herd, who returned as CEO in early 2025 after a period away, told investors she had cut performance marketing spend by 80% as part of a deliberate pivot away from volume-driven acquisition and towards what she described as “higher-intent, organically driven growth.”

That painful restructuring appears to be what investors chose to focus on. Bumble’s stock rose between 25% and 35% in the days following the earnings report, depending on the point of measurement, a rally that looks like a bet on the turnaround rather than a reaction to the numbers themselves.

JPMorgan upgraded BMBL from Underweight to Neutral, citing stabilising leading indicators and the Bumble 2.0 launch, targeted for Q2 2026, as a potential catalyst. Wells Fargo kept an Equal Weight rating but pointed to Q1 EBITDA guidance of $80 million, roughly 42% above analyst estimates, as a sign that margin discipline is taking hold.

Bumble is not alone in the AI pivot. Tinder’s Chemistry feature uses personal questions and camera roll access to sharpen match recommendations. Grindr’s Edge subscription tier offers AI summaries of past chats and compatibility statistics.

What Bee represents, if it works, is a more ambitious commitment: not augmenting the swipe, but replacing it as the primary discovery mechanism.

That is a significant trust ask. Users interacting with Bee will be sharing detailed, intimate information about what they want from relationships with an AI system, and implicitly allowing that system to make consequential social decisions on their behalf.

Wolfe Herd said that privacy and member control of data are “central” to how Bee has been designed, though the company has not yet published detailed documentation on what data Bee retains, how it is used to train models, or what opt-out mechanisms will look like in practice. 

The chapter-based profiles and potential no-swipe markets are scheduled for the second half of 2026, according to the product timeline Wolfe Herd shared with investors.

Bee’s beta will arrive before that. For a company that has spent most of the past two years shrinking, both in ambition and headcount, it is a notably bold sequence of bets all riding on the idea that what daters actually want is less choice, not more.

Rox, a startup developing autonomous AI agents to boost sales productivity, has raised a new funding round valuing the company at $1.2 billion, according to multiple sources.

The funding included a lead investment from returning backer General Catalyst, two of the people said. Rox and General Catalyst did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

At the time of the fundraise, which closed last year, Rox was projected to close 2025 with $8 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), according to two people familiar with the deal.

In November 2024, Rox announced it had raised a total of $50 million, including a seed round led by Sequoia and a Series A round led by General Catalyst, with participation from GV.

Rox was founded in 2024 by the former chief growth officer of New Relic, Ishan Mukherjee. Mukherjee joined New Relic following its 2020 acquisition of Pixie, a software monitoring startup he co-founded.

The startup positions itself as an intelligent revenue operating system that plugs into a company’s current software setup — from Salesforce to Zendesk — and deploys hundreds of AI agents. These agents monitor existing accounts, research prospects, and update CRM software. By consolidating these functions, Rox aims to replace and streamline numerous fragmented software solutions currently used by sales teams.

“Rox’s unique system of AI agents levels up the CRM experience,” GV investor Dave Munichiello wrote in a 2024 blog post when announcing the Series A round. “These agents work constantly behind the scenes to monitor customer activity, identify potential risks and opportunities, and even suggest the best course of action.”

Rox’s competition spans several categories, including established revenue intelligence providers like Gong and Clari, as well as AI sales development platforms such as 11x and Artisan. There is also a steady stream of new AI-native, all-in-one CRM competitors joining the field, such as Monaco — a startup founded by Sam Blond, the former president of corporate spending platform Brex — which launched out of stealth last month.

According to Rox’s website, the company’s customers include Ramp, MongoDB, and New Relic.  

Phone batteries die faster in times of crisis, and it is not just because people spend more time online.

When cell towers are damaged or overloaded, phones work harder to stay connected, using up more power. Weak signals, frequent reconnecting, and increased activity from the phone’s modem are among the main reasons the battery does not last as long in these situations.

The biggest factor is weak or unstable signal strength. When phones struggle to connect to a cell tower, they increase transmission power. The power amplifier inside a phone is one of its most power-hungry parts, and it works overtime when signals are weak.

Researchers have found that signal strength worsens during emergencies when networks are overloaded or damaged, meaning that phones use more energy just to stay online.

These networks can become overloaded as people simultaneously make calls, send messages, and use data to check in with others. Heavy traffic can lead to slower connections and repeated data transmissions, leading the phone’s radio and processor to stay active for longer.

Even when it is not actively being used, a phone’s modem is constantly talking to nearby towers, checking in and syncing. When downloading data, the modem is responsible for 40 percent of total mobile energy consumption.

When the network is unstable, phones switch between towers or network types to find a better connection. They have to reconnect and re-sync more often, which pushes energy use higher.

When the network is weak or unstable, phones have to do more behind the scenes—like resending data or running extra checks—to maintain a connection. This extra work means the radio and processor are busier than usual, which leads to even faster battery drain.

Reports of GPS interference could also have an impact. People in the United Arab Emirates have reported GPS systems showing incorrect locations or simply failing to load. When a device struggles to find an accurate satellite signal, the GPS chip continues scanning and recalculating location fixes, which keeps the sensor and processor active and consumes more battery.

How to Save Battery

Simple fixes like lowering screen brightness and shortening screen time-out settings can reduce power consumption. The Power Saving mode limits background activity and closes unnecessary apps. And reducing how often email and social media sync for updates conserves energy, as frequent syncing keeps the device active even when it is not being used.

Researchers found that delaying background traffic cut down energy consumption by up to 23.7 and 21.5 percent under Wi-Fi and 3G, respectively.

When in an area with weak reception, turn of mobile data if it is not needed, and disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS to conserve energy. All of these functions regularly scan for signals in the background.

Keeping device software updated can improve energy efficiency, and using the correct charger and avoiding extreme heat and cold helps maintain long-term battery health. Modern smartphone batteries also perform better when they are not fully discharged, so keeping the battery above roughly 20 percent can help preserve its lifespan, according to Samsung.

from the it’s-blaring dept

Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing. If you’ve followed Wyden’s career, you know this is not a man prone to hyperbole — and you know his track record on these warnings is perfect.

Just last month, we wrote about the Wyden Siren — the pattern where Senator Ron Wyden sends a cryptic public signal that something terrible is happening behind the classification curtain, can’t say what it is, and then is eventually proven right. Every single time. The catalyst then was a two-sentence letter to CIA Director Ratcliffe expressing “deep concerns about CIA activities.”

Well, the siren is going off once again. This time, Wyden took to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech, ostensibly about the since approved (with support of many Democrats) nomination of Joshua Rudd to lead the NSA. Wyden was protesting that nomination, but in the context of Rudd being unwilling to agree to basic constitutional limitations on NSA surveillance. But that’s just a jumping off point ahead of Section 702’s upcoming reauthorization deadline. Buried in the speech is a passage that should set off every alarm bell:

There’s another example of secret law related to Section 702, one that directly affects the privacy rights of Americans. For years, I have asked various administrations to declassify this matter. Thus far they have all refused, although I am still waiting for a response from DNI Gabbard. I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.

You can see the full video here if you want.

Here’s a sitting member of the Senate Intelligence Committee — someone with access to the classified details — is telling his colleagues and the public that there is a secret interpretation of Section 702 that “directly affects the privacy rights of Americans,” that he’s been asking multiple administrations to declassify it, that they’ve all refused, and that when it finally comes out, people will be stunned.

If you’ve followed Wyden for any amount of time, this all sounds very familiar. In 2011, Wyden warned that the government had secretly reinterpreted the PATRIOT Act to mean something entirely different from what Congress and the public understood. He couldn’t say what. Nobody believed it could be that bad. Then the Snowden revelations showed the NSA was engaged in bulk collection of essentially every American’s phone metadata. In 2017, he caught the Director of National Intelligence answering a different question than the one Wyden asked about Section 702 surveillance. The pattern repeats. The siren sounds. Years pass. And then, eventually, we find out it was worse than we imagined.

Now here he is, doing the exact same thing with Section 702 yet again, now that it’s up for renewal. Congress is weeks away from a reauthorization vote, and Wyden is explicitly telling his colleagues (not for the first time) they are preparing to vote on a law whose actual meaning is being kept secret from them as well as from the American public:

The past fifteen years have shown that, unless the Congress can have an open debate about surveillance authorities, the laws that are passed cannot be assumed to have the support of the American people. And that is fundamentally undemocratic. And, right now, the government is relying on secret law with regard to Section 702 of FISA. I’ve already mentioned the provision that was stuck into the last reauthorization bill, that could allow the government to force all sorts of people to spy on their fellow citizens. I have explained the details of how the Biden Administration chose to interpret it, and how the Trump Administration will interpret it, are a big secret. Americans have the right to be confused and angry that this is how the government and Congress choose to do business.

That’s a United States senator who has a long history of calling out secret interpretations that lead to surveillance of Americans — standing on the Senate floor and warning, once again, that there’s a secret interpretation of Section 702 authorities. One that almost certainly means mass surveillance.

And Wyden knows exactly how this plays out. He’s been through the reauthorization cycle enough times to know the playbook the intelligence community runs every time 702 is up for renewal:

I’ve been doing this a long time, so I know how this always goes. Opponents of reforming Section 702 don’t want a real debate where Members can decide for themselves which reform amendments to support. So what always happens is that a lousy reauthorization bill magically shows up a few days before the authorization expires and Members are told that there’s no time to do anything other than pass that bill and that if they vote for any amendments, the program will die and terrible things will happen and it will be all their fault.

Don’t buy into that.

He’s right. Every time reauthorization is on the table, no real debate happens, and then just before the authorization is about to run out, some loyal soldier of the surveillance brigade in Congress will scream “national security” at the top of their lungs, insist there’s no time to debate this or people will die, and then promises that we need to just re-authorize for a few more years, at which point we’ll be able to hold a debate on the surveillance.

A debate that never arrives.

But even setting aside the secret interpretation Wyden can’t discuss, his speech highlights something almost as damning: just how spectacularly the supposed “reforms” from the last reauthorization have failed. Remember, one of the big “concessions” to get the last reauthorization across the finish line was a requirement that “sensitive searches” — targeting elected officials, political candidates, journalists, and the like — would need the approval of the FBI’s Deputy Director.

This was in response to some GOP elected officials being on the receiving end of investigations during the Biden era, freaking out that the NSA appeared to be doing the very things plenty of civil society and privacy advocates had been telling them about for over a decade while they just yelled “national security” back at us.

So how are those small “reforms” working out? Here’s Wyden:

The so-called big reform was to require the approval of the Deputy FBI Director for these sensitive searches.

Until two months ago, the Deputy FBI Director was Dan Bongino. As most of my colleagues know, Mr. Bongino is a longtime conspiracy theorist who has frequently called for specious investigations of his political opponents. This is the man whom the President and the U.S. Senate put in charge of these incredibly sensitive searches. And Bongino’s replacement as Deputy Director, Andrew Bailey, is a highly partisan election denier who recently directed a raid on a Georgia election office in an effort to justify Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories. I don’t know about my colleagues, but this so-called reform makes me feel worse, not better.

So the grand reform that was supposed to provide meaningful oversight of the FBI’s most sensitive surveillance activities ended up placing that authority in the hands of a conspiracy theorist, followed by a partisan election denier. And just to make the whole thing even more farcical, Wyden notes that the FBI has refused to even keep a basic record of these searches:

But it’s even worse than it looks. The FBI has refused to even keep track of all of the sensitive searches the Deputy Director has considered. The Inspector General urged the FBI to just put this information into a simple spreadsheet and they refused to do it. That is how much the FBI does not want oversight.

They won’t maintain a spreadsheet. The Inspector General asked them to track their use of a sensitive surveillance power using what amounts to a basic Excel file, and the FBI said no. That’s the state of “reform” for Section 702 after the last re-auth.

Wyden has also been sounding the alarm about the expansion of who can be forced to spy on behalf of the government, thanks to a provision jammed into the last reauthorization that expanded the definition of “electronic communications service provider” to cover essentially anyone with access to communications equipment. As Wyden explained:

Two years ago, during the last reauthorization debacle, something really bad happened. Over in the House, existing surveillance law was changed so that the government could force anyone with “access” to communications to secretly collect those communications for the government. As I pointed out at the time, that could mean anyone installing or repairing a cable box, or anyone responsible for a wifi router. It was a jaw-dropping expansion of authorities that could end up forcing countless ordinary Americans to secretly help the government spy on their fellow citizens.

The Biden administration apparently promised to use this authority narrowly. But, of course, the Trump administration has made no such promise. As we say with every expansion of executive authority, just imagine how the worst possible president from the opposing party would use it. And now we don’t have to wonder any more.

Wyden correctly points out that secret promises from a prior administration are worth exactly nothing:

But here’s the other thing – whatever secret promise the Biden Administration made about using these vast, unchecked authorities with restraint, the current administration clearly isn’t going to feel bound by that promise. So whatever the previous administration intended to accomplish with that provision, there is absolutely nothing preventing the current administration from conscripting those cable repair and tech support men and women to secretly spy on Americans.

So to tally this up: Congress is about to vote on reauthorizing Section 702 with a secret legal interpretation that Wyden says will stun the public when it’s eventually revealed, with “reforms” that placed surveillance approval authority in the hands of conspiracy theorists who won’t even keep a spreadsheet, with a massively expanded definition of who can be forced to help the government spy, with secret promises about restraint that the current administration has no intention of honoring, and with a nominee to lead the NSA who won’t commit to following the Constitution.

The Wyden Siren is blaring. And if history is any guide — and it has been, without exception — whatever is behind the classification curtain is worse than what we can see from the outside.

Filed Under: joshua rudd, mass surveillance, nsa, ron wyden, section 702, surveillance, wyden siren

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