The Hacking Group, a company in Italy which provides tracking software used by the DEA and anti-drug forces in other countries, has been hacked. It's emails have been published, including one that shows the DEA has been intercepting every IP address in Colombia. More here.

VICE reports the Hacking Team is now in emergency mode, urging customers to stop using its products. The Hacking Team's website is here. A spreadsheet showing its customers and revenues is here.

The Centers for Disease Control released a report today, "Vital Signs: Demographic and Substance Use Trends Among Heroin Users — United States, 2002–2013." The press release is here.

It finds increased heroin use, particularly among users of pain pills and cocaine, and increased heroin-related deaths.

Predictably, the report calls for more restrictions on pain pills. The U.S. always gets it backwards when it comes to drugs.

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President Obama just held a news conference on ISIS. I only caught the last 10 minutes. He said we would continue what we've been doing, and that we can't defeat ISIS militarily, we have to defeat their ideology.

Update: The part of his speech I missed: "We will do more to train and equip the moderate opposition in Syria." I think that's a waste of resources -- there is no "moderate" opposition.

In Iraq news, the Iraqi military dropped a bomb by mistake on Baghdad, killing and wounding civilians. Iraq says its Russian fighter jet malfunctioned, releasing the bomb.

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Egypt's Foreign Ministry has issued a new style guide for media coverage of terrorism. It bans the use of the words "ISIS, ISIL or Islamic State." It instructs reporters not to use any religious based terms when referring to terrorist groups, including "jihadists", "Islamists" or "fundamentalists." Reporters cannot refer to leaders of these groups with the label "Sheikh" or "Emir."

How are reporters supposed to refer to the groups? The guide says the acceptable terms include "terrorists, extremists, criminals, murderers, savages, slaughterers, assassins, radicals, fanatics, rebels" and a few others.

You can read the new rules here.

On June 23, the Pentagon announced Tunisian Ali al Harzi, who was a suspect in the 2012 Benghazi embassy attack, was killed in an airstrike in Mosul, Iraq on June 15. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced his brother, Tariq al Harzi, (pictured above) was killed in an airstrike in Syria on June 16. I wrote a long post on the background of the al Harzi brothers here, commenting that Tariq seemed to be the more significant of the pair.

But there's more to Tariq that I find interesting and hasn't been reported in Government reward listings or OFAC notices: Tariq was a champion boxer in Tunesia who lost a leg in a 2004 U.S. bombing attack in Fallujah in Iraq. Human rights groups said he was tortured for three months by Iraqi intelligence at Abu Ghraib. (He later told his father the Americans had treated him well.) U.S. detention records list him as #009 654. [More...]

As America celebrates Freedom and Independence today, here are some thoughts on what they mean.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. I hope you all have a great day planned. When you return, please tell us about it.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Here's a new open thread, all topics welcome.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has released the 2014 Wiretap Report.

The number of federal and state wiretaps authorized in 2014 decreased 1 percent from 2013. The most serious offense under investigation in 89 percent of all applications for intercepts was illegal drugs.

Here's the data page showing totals by federal district. The full report is here.

DEA wiretaps have tripled in the last decade, and it appears the DEA is increasingly filing requests in state courts, bypassing Title III and federal courts.

The UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) released its latest report on coca production in Colombia today. Coca production is up 44%.

The increase is the biggest in almost a decade and takes coca production back to levels not seen since 2009. The findings come on the heels of a separate U.S. government survey showing production shot up 39 percent in 2014.

Donald Trump may be second to Jeb Bush in new polls, but his financial interests keep getting whacked. The latest: Reports of hacked credit card data at Trump Hotels in several cities, dating back to February.

In addition to Macy’s, Univision and Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Trump just got dumped by Serta Mattresses.

On top of all that, the Washington Post reports he's wrong about immigrants and crime. Here's an article I wrote for the Washington Examiner in 2007 stating the same thing: There is No Immigrant Crime Wave.

Here's a new open thread, all topics welcome.

Indonesia's former foreign minister says the U.S. asked Indonesia to send ground troops to Iraq to fight ISIS, and it refused: It didn't want to upset "radical Muslims" at home.

Indonesia was asked by the United States to send troops to join the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Iraq but declined because it feared a backlash among radical Muslims at home, the country's former foreign minister has revealed. Marty Natalegawa, the long-serving top envoy under Jakarta's previous administration, said Indonesia felt it could better contribute by tackling its own domestic extremism problem, whereas sending forces would be "cosmetic".

Maybe the next time it gets hit by a massive Tsunami, our response should be "We can better use that money at home."