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Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Arrested In Belize
First time accepted submitter rebelwarlock writes "McAfee lives in Belize and he says that he has become a target of the Gang Suppression Unit. He says the GSU came busting into his research facility in Orange Walk, killed his dog, took his passport, handcuffed him and arrested him on a bogus weapons charge. McAfee says he's a victim because he didn't donate money to a known U.D.P. Orange Walk politician."
...they were just warning him that his subscription was about to run out.
It's ironic that a man who works for an organization that uses the same business model: paying protection money so nothing bad happens to himself or his property, just had something bad happen to him for not paying a different organization protection money. Antivirus software is based mostly on scare tactics and it is an attempt at fixing the problem of poor digital hygiene. If people were just more careful with their data, and didn't use web browsers or other network software that allowed the execution of arbitrary code (Javascript, for example: 90% of the websites out there that use it could be redesigned to work without it) would find their risk of a virus or malware infection to be slightly above nothing. Of course, you can't eliminate the risk entirely, but there's no need to be dropping $50 plus a year on subscriptions either.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I bet you thought they were a (gang suppression) unit,
but they're actually a gang (suppression unit).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They do it to intimidate the owner, the same reason they break down unlocked doors. It's violence that is easily written off as property damage.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
When the president of any country publicly calls you out by name and says you're on the "wrong side of the law", you have every reason to be afraid. Especially when the president's appointees have openly practiced and justified the unlimited detention and the killing of citizens without due process.
Claiming that it's "conservatives" are against this is a pretty disingenuous way to defend this kind of behavior. Especially considering it's likely a conservative president will likely be elected at some time in the future. When he tries these things, will you defend it then, too?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There's quite alot of foreshadowing in the fastcompany article:
Then there is the $1 million patrol boat he donated to the Belizean coast guard. (In a letter to The New York Times, he described it as an act of philanthropy; later, he tells me he had to bribe members of the coast guard to prevent them from hassling his ferry business: "This is a third-world country. I had to bribe a whole bunch of folks.
indicating that he routinely gives large, overt, public bribes to get whatever he wants in Belize
Then there's this:
"And so a pair of police officers came to visit him. "We are sorry that we have to tell you to stop building that wall," they said. "I am sorry that I have to tell you that I am going to build it anyway," he told them, and they left. To McAfee, this exchange was proof of the evolved level of discourse in Belize, where a person is largely left to do as he pleases. . . At the time, I thought that he was simply being argumentative. But McAfee seems to want freedom without limitation. Needless to say, few of us exercise this sort of freedom. It tends to be very expensive."
Either he is willfully ignoring the fact that this seems to have been a small-time shakedown attempt or he is completely oblivious to it. Did he really think Belize patrolmen (note, not the environmental cops) are so genuinely concerned about shoreline regulations?? He doesn't seem to realize by being so brazen about describing large bribes to the press he's just inviting even bigger, less polite shake-downs in the future, which sounds exactly like what (unfortunately) just went down. Did he really think that request for a campaign contribution for the guy employing police hitsquads was purely optional when bribes for building permits, import permits, business titles, etc. for his dozens of shell companies were not?
Sure, it still sucks, and I feel sorry for him, but it really does sound like he specifically chose Belize because he liked how pliable the laws were if you had money and it never occurred to him that cuts both ways...
Not only that. He flees from the US to some tax haven so he won't have to repay society for all the money he extracted. The thing is, he forgot that living in such cheap places come with certain downsides. This was one of them, wait until he gets into a car accident or desperately needs medical attention, he'll remigrate faster than the popups appear for his antivirus programs. Karma est meretrix.
AV software is like car insurance
Only if your car insurance also lowers your gas mileage, decreases your acceleration & cornering & braking performance, and flashes your headlights, while honking your horn randomly, when you're just trying to drive from A to B.
Most commercial anti-virus software exhibits ~exactly~ the behaviors that people expect from a virus: degraded performance, consumption of disk and memory resources, intrusive popups, etc.
most of the time you are just paying for nothing but when you actually need it, it's pretty damn helpful.
When you actually need it, it's too late. As someone mentioned earlier, basic digital hygiene is the best solution. Beyond that a free AV package to run a one-time scan if/when something slips through.
Is this flamebait? Anyway, yes, as a (not very good perhaps) Quaker, with our testimony to ethical business, I have to observe that people who want pictures of naked people having sex go to porn sites where they presumably get exactly that. Most of the religious websites I have (usually accidentally) visited make extremely dubious and unprovable claims which, for any other subject, would in this country be regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority. So it doesn't surprise me that the operators of those religious websites are more likely to find themselves hosting malicious material; in some cases the entire website is clearly malicious in intent, since it attempts to persuade people of things for which a great deal of evidence exists that they are untrue.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I agree. If you betray the country that enabled you to become wealthy, then don't cry to it for help if you get fucked over in your new tax haven.
He worked for NASA and for Lockheed Martin, both are government funded, whole or in part.
His company benefited from the legal protections of the US.
He moved to Belize to avoid multiple lawsuits.
Suck it up John; you chose a new devil and know it wants to know you.
Yes, I have absolutely no sympathy for John McAfee. He made a choice, and has to face the consequences. TANSTAAFL.
If Belize was truly so much better, we would all live there. (Or, to put it another way, if McAfee was so much better than other AV software, we would all use it...)
I feel very sorry for the true victim here: the dog.
I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read Kupfernigk response. The sites which are least professionally built and maintained are most vulnerable to outsiders planting malware. Many of the less mainstream religious sites fall into this category of low technical management and are thus vulnerable.
Porn, being a huge industry, seems to get the attention of more skilled developers and administrators (if not actors and camera people). While surely some are not, and those will be vulnerable, I think most of the porn sites that are malware laden fall into the category of 'honeypots' with either fake or real porn placed with the deliberate goal of being a malware vector.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Actually, Belize is amazing and safe.
True police states are indeed safe and lovely to visit, for those who do not have to live in them or fear being able to leave ever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley