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John McAfee Explains How He Milked Information From Belize's Elite
paysonwelch points out John McAfee's latest blog post, which "details the complex spy network that he used to tap information from the highest echelons of the Belizean government. He might consider a new career as a movie producer — this blog post is enthralling. Here is an excerpt: 'I purchased 75 cheap laptop computers and, with trusted help, intalled invisible keystroke logging software on all of them — the kind that calls home (to me) and disgorges the text files. I began giving these away as presents to select people — government employees, police officers, Cabinet Minister's assistants, girlfriends of powerful men, boyfriends of powerful women.'"
Nut Job
He certainly is now.
If I were in charge, I would send him to Belize as a show of good faith.
The amount of coverage McAfee has received on Slashdot and other "news" sources rivals the bloat his software adds to a system. Nothing to see here, move along.
I have to call BS, I live along the border of Belize and nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE can you find electronics that cheap. Electronics are gold in these countries.
He might consider a new career as a movie producer — this blog post is fictional.
FTFH?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
After the rumours that av producers were also producing virii, at least this confirms McAfee antivirus cannot be trusted.
No doubt J McAfee will explain his actions as totally justified and honourable.
paysonwelch, just stop using that false name.
We all know you're McAfee.
Nobody else would his "his blog post [is] enthralling.". It's completely moronic, just from the excerpt and the headline alone.
You're sounding like Homer Simpson chanting "I am so smart. S.M.R.T".
So, let me get this straight: John McAfee is the founding-father of a large anti-virus company, he's worked with Zonelabs on their firewall software and so on, and then in the end he ends up doing exactly the same thing he's tried to protect people from -- namely, installing keyloggers and spying on everything they type on their computers?
This first one was interesting but seriously; does Slashdot need to 're-blog' everything he says and does?
explain how he sidestepped a murder charge from a soverign nation and has since remained unaccountable as to the history of his seventeen year old female companion and alleged methamphetamine production operation, I believe slashdot can finally put "the amazing adventures of John McAfee" back on the bookshelf.
There is nothing about this entire series of unfortunate events that shouldnt warrant immediate extradition to Belize, where he can face his accusors in a court of law and presumably vindicate himself. Otherwise this is an indignant millionaires whitewash campaign to secure his innocence through astroturf and puffery. Unfortunately Mr McAfee wasnt found accused of these crimes in say, the Soviet Union or China, both countries willing to mail a dead millionaire back to his respective embassy for nothing short of a Benny-Hill approach to their criminal justice system.
Good people go to bed earlier.
As someone who knows many drug addicts and used to be one himself over 15 years ago: John McAfee's blog is not the writing of a drug addict. Either he is as clear from drugs as he says he is or he has someone else write the stuff for him.
Or not?
I mean spyware on other people's computers sounds pretty criminal to me.
He probably has been in trouble for a long time...or at least running with a bad crowd.
It will catch up to him, but I don't know if there is any reason to deport him.
As far as his blog ("TFA") goes, it could be anything. Maybe he thinks he's been working for a gov't...maybe he thinks he's above international law...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Monitoring powerful people?
Either he's delusional or a criminal, and either way he's being pretty stupid. I wish the guy would get some help -- medical or legal -- and then shut the hell up.
A hollow wooden horse? How stupid are these people? I understand if we we're talking about hardware bugs but software???
Then again, most people run on their computer what ever the vendor installed for them... incredible.
Why would anyone want intelligence on what the Belize elite is up to? Why bother? They are simply not that interesting.
Even that one can think that the Belize authorities are corrupt, but a man (his neighbour) was killed and John Mcafee is/was the main suspect
but everything that slashdot publishes are the desperados-like yet successful attempts of John Mcafee to prevent from being captured and to stand trail.
And why does he publishes these details now, if he is innocent and this is all a conspiracy against him, he could have used these spying capabilities to bust the scam and reveal the real killers with live audio.
When he has such proof of such a conspiracy, he should compile it into a report and release it to the public leaving away his personality issues.
Just clear facts.
The fact that it phoned home to him didn't pose any serious risk of getting caught for spying on government officials. Is he smart? No, he is an ass who was just lucky to get away with it.
The way he show up in news proves that he is hacker.
Sure, why not. At least I want to see how this crazy story continues.
This guy sounded way more interesting, yet how many people heard about it? There are several news articles remaining on the web about him. I once dug far enough to find something about him needing to build something higher up than he was at the time, and more involving aliens and the military.
Google his name and search for yourself. Was it really a mental disorder or something more?
Dead founder of Webroot, Steven Thomas, more interesting
------------------------
Search Continues For Missing Millionaire
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/search-continues-for-missing-millionaire
"The last time I saw him on Thursday, he was having major panic attacks. He was very agitated, aggressive. He was very paranoid. He thinks everyone on the island is out to get him," said his wife, Candis Thomas. "He thinks the military is involved, he thinks that aliens are involved, and he's just been in a real delusion state of being fearful."
"He said he needed to use the bathroom, but never returned. At the time he was wearing a light-green T-shirt, shorts and slippers."
##
Missing Webroot founder found dead
Tragic end in Hawaii
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/14/webroot_founder_dead/
"Police have recovered the body of missing technology entrepreneur Steven Thomas, the founder of anti-spyware firm Webroot Software[1]."
"Thomas was reportedly suffering from paranoid delusions running up to the time of his disappearance."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webroot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Thomas_(entrepreneur)
"he did send a letter to his closest friends that if he turned up missing or dead it was not his fault."
##
http://www.lavasoft.com/mylavasoft/company/blog/in-our-thoughts
##
Millionaireâ(TM)s falling death âis beyond sadâ(TM)
http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/07/15/news/story03.html
"Hikers found the badly decomposed body of the Lanikai resident, who was reported to have a bipolar disorder, at 12:45 p.m. Sunday below the Pali Lookout, nearly two weeks after his disappearance."
"Police have not yet ruled out foul play, Maj. Alan Bluemke said yesterday, although he emphasized no foul play was suspected. The case remains classified as an unattended death, pending the full medical examiner's report.
According to his wife, Thomas began developing problems in April, had been arrested for running naked in his neighborhood and was diagnosed later with bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness, but had refused medication.
Police had described Thomas as emotionally distraught, and his wife had said he had been displaying suicidal behavior.
Thomas had been involved in real estate and stocks after selling Webroot Software, known for its Spy Sweeper software, in 2004 for $108 million."
##
Mysterious events surround death of former FOUNDER of the company WEBROOT â" GOOGLE about the former FOUNDER of the company WEBROOT, Steven Thomas.
Maybe he was onto something? You have to read many articles about him to get a better picture of how odd the events were surrounding his death. Webroot Software founder Steven Thomas was found dead in Hawaii. Save the articles and store them off-line on read only media because the stories will disappear eventually.
Many articles mention he said he was being harassed by ALIENS and THE GOVERNMENT, and others.
Sounds like MKULtra to me.
##
Webroot founder died from fall
The brand name McAfee is getting thoroughly trashed. Now all that remains from the purchase is a bloated digital placebo software.
http://www.mcafee.com/us/downloads/free-tools/index.aspx
"McAfee is committed to your security and provides an assortment of free McAfee tools to help in your software development. Simply select a tool and download it for free."
You may remember most of these tools as coming from Foundstone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundstone
"Foundstone is a practice within McAfee Professional Services that provides tactical and strategic computer security services."
"Although Foundstone is owned by McAfee, it stays vendor neutral in order to remain impartial in its services."
McAfee Has keylogers in it that phones home that must be why it's so slow.
I have been writing about this from the beginning of this ignorance.
I do not believe a single word that comes out of John McAfee's pie hole. He wants to distract people from the fact that he was molesting children in Belize, was cooking Bath Salts and probably killed his neighbor. The man is not a folk hero, he is the man you want to protect your children from.
http://john-mcafee.blogspot.com/
I stopped reading after he got into terrorism. If any of this were remotely true he could have called the FBI and CIA and they would have gotten him out of Belize in a heartbeat just to take control of all his spies and keylogging network. Enough with the "jokes" John.
And McAfee wonders why the Belize government is out to get him? This kind of crime easily would carry a very long prison sentence in most countries.
This is clearly bullshit.
At every turn, he attaches quantities to resources:
75 cheap laptops
23 women
6 men
8 of the women lived with him
2 people in the Nicaraguan Hezbollah camp
3 people in Mexico dealing with the Zetas
The only "evidence" supporting his story are his "so easy to fake my kids could it" screenshots and audio files.
I think the original assessment stands: This is a guy who has snorted waaaay too much MPDV, is seeing shadow men in bushes, and killed his neighbor in retaliation for his neighbor killing his dog.
He escaped the country via a combination of his charisma, money, and the ineptitude of the Belize law enforcement.
This is all just a retroactive attempt at explaining why the Belize government would want to frame him. Look, it's simple...why would Belize kill his neighbor to frame McAfee, when they could simply just kill McAfee instead?
Paranoid bullshit, and so obviously so.
Or what kind of key-loggers did he use?
rotfl...
Looks like he used a camera to take the screenshots ;)
John, there are easier ways.
butt.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
So, the real lesson here is not to accept and technological gifts from a security guru. Gee, thanks!
Megalomania. Is that in the DSM? Ah, wiki says no, it's a type of narcissistic personality disorder.
How about paranoia!
He didn't. He is a person of interested wanted for questioning, not a charged criminal. If he was a charged criminal, fleeing to the US wouldn't help, as the US has an extradition treaty with Belize that provides for the extradition of criminals charged with any of a wide array of crimes, including, naturally, as #1 on the list, murder.
You mean, other than the fact that Belize hasn't criminally charged him with anything, much less anything subject to the extradition treaty with the US?
Or, for that matter, anywhere else. Because he hasn't actually been charged with any crimes, anywhere.
After the GSU raid on McAfee's Orange Walk compound he decided to go on the offensive.
He gave away 75 cheap laptops complete with keyloggers and backdoors to key people in the GOB. He backed these up with human spies.
Things he claims or implies to have discovered:
Whatever it is, fictional or fact, his blog posts are turning out to be far interesting than anything else I've read in the past few months.
Asshole.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
the rise of the 'computer virus' was not as clean cut as we remember it. there were people who actively 'played' the 'news cycle' of the day to promote the idea of huge virus attacks. McAfee was just another one of these.
The problems come when some people start wondering --- where exactly did the viruses come from in the first place. Now there is no evidence that McAfee wrote viruses or spread malware --- but here we can see that he has no moral qualms about doing it. Hence - his entire 80s business was not built around protecting people, it was about something else (making money? technical challenge?).
The other parts of his history are as interesting - look up the Pow Wow software, where was involved in the creation of a corporation run by Native Americans, including it in marketing materials on the website. Turns out there were no natives on the dev team nor on the management nor anywhere else. IT was likely just for a tax break or maybe just plain old racism.
John's next feat was to become a 'spiritual adviser' and he wrote several new age books under a fake name. He would charge people huge sums of money to come be 'spiritual' with him at his retreat.
So .... to some this latest twist might be gob smacking. To others, its just fucking John being a fucking sociopath. And the thing about sociopaths? They never change.
there, boy.
> I think a man who has royally pissed of the powers
>that be in a 2nd world country is wise to stay as far
>away from "justice" as he possibly can.
Where is the CIA in all this? And the Navy?
How did Belize fall into the Soviet sphere of influence? I thought the Monroe Doctrine was quite clear on US use of force in such matters . . .
hawk
Can't wait for the movie.
I can believe in corrupt police framing people, heck we've seen them do it across the globe. I can believe in corrupt police murdering people, again, we've seen it. But why would they murder someone, to frame someone else? That seems like a "supervillian" move, meaning needlessly complex to achieve the actual goal. Just murder the person you want killed and be done with it.
There is just no credibility to this guy.
Also, as a practical matter, if what he says about all this information grabbing is true, he's probably guilty of a bunch of computer crimes in Belize too. He certainly would be in the US. You can't just go and keylog people because you want to.
This is one of the places where the story rings false. Given any 30 people involved in full-time spying on dozens of other people, it is _inevitable_ that at least one of them would notify the police of this operation. Not only because the activity is illegal
You only hear about the cases where people blab...
Also: people blab when it's in their perceived interests. If you live in a country where leadership is bumping off political protesters, there is much less self interest in admitting that you've been helping some rich American engage in espionage. The problem with being brutal and corrupt is that a)it makes people hate you b)it is excellent incentive to not blab about things you're doing against the government.
There also can be plenty of blabbing, just not to anyone who is in power or those associated with them. Information doesn't flow freely - it tends to be like the ocean, with thermoclines representing class/power levels, political affiliation, religion, language, etc. Damn near everyone in a city who works as an office cleaner could know that Joe Big Bank Executive is banging his secretary after-hours, for example.
An even better example would probably be DC. I bet there's all sorts of bullshit that everyone in political/diplomatic circles in DC knows about, but your average person off the street doesn't.
Please help metamoderate.
... that the people with the most interest in putting malware on computers were the very same people who sold you software to remove it. So I don't find this in the least surprising.
Please? Can we just kill him and be done with this useless bag of shit?
As near as I can tell, never in his life has he actually been a useful member of society. Thats not a crime in and of itself of course, but he actively goes out of his way to show examples of why he shouldn't be permitted to waste oxygen and water resources.
This is a prime example of when a drone strike should be permitted on a US citizen.
I'd say just execute him in a normal way, but his flamboyant behavior deserves a proportional removal from the planet. Just shooting or hanging him would be an unfitting end.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Nut Job
May I suggest "pervert" as an alternative?
starring Gary Buse as John McAfee
You can't discount this stuff just because you don't believe it's possible that one man and his team could have dug all this stuff up. Motivated individuals can do quite a lot, if they have lots and lots of time, money, and focus. Apparently he has all three.
A lot of stuff here could cause problems for Belize, but really, the big problem for McAfee is he's now a bona-fide target. Before, he was just some pain in the ass. Now he's probably become a target of opportunity. Depending on how this plays in Belize, he might even be upgraded to active removal.
It must be fun working for him...until the hammer comes down.
Prepare your tinfoil hat dudes because lots of pieces of information are starting to come together.
If we take McAfee's findings as true (which they appear to be) then Iran is preparing the capability of conducting a massive chemical attack on the United States. I will now present the threads of evidence for you to consider.
No wonder the fictional President in 1600 Penn is so involved in his daughter's choice of boyfriends.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is all starting to remind me a bit of Randy Quaid. Formerly relatively sane, had a decent career and money, and now going completely nuts. Telling all kinds of stories on conspiracies and how people are out to get him. (although in this case they really do want McAfee)
Makes me wonder (besides the obvious drugs) what flips in someones head to make them bonkers like this.
Doesn't this belong in the egotistical self-delusioned celebrity section?
This first one was interesting but seriously; does Slashdot need to 're-blog' everything he says and does?
Since it keeps happening, I would say yes.
Look, dude is loony, most likely from the bathsalts he shoves up his butt. This is Reality TV at it's best, by not being on TV. If you can't understand why this appeals to us, then just ignore these stories. Very fucking easy to do.
Be seeing you...
I get 'invalid cert' for apis.google.com when I click on www.whoismcafee.com/a-clear-and-present-danger/
AccountKiller
Belize couldn't get a better publicity if it paid for it. It's a nation of less than half a million people. They are trying to attract US retirees as a business model. Powerful people? C'mon.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I lived there in the past and I am not surprised by the general picture painted by the story, the people there are like that.
As for the terrorist issues, I'll let the CIA worry about the voracity of those claims as they would have no problem checking all the evidence, if JM hands it over to them.
Then again they probably already know even more that he does, LOL.
Seriously the story seems crazy, but Belize really is that crazy!
I'd say that, if Mr. McAfee were tired of being just another retired millionaire who few people know or care about -- and so he figured out a way to score himself a couple of books, maybe a movie, and get the whole internet busy turning him into an underdog celebrity millionaire -- even if he winds up notorious in the same way as Billy the Kid or John Dillinger or Hunter S. Thompson, who most of have heard about all of our lives -- he's going about it exactly the right way.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
McAfee conspires with McBelizeTinPotInChief to make a Second Thailand out of Belize. He talks about lots of vagina all the time. Sounds like a marketing campaign of a cash-strapped country. "Cheap and plenty vaginas on sale here !"
Maybe M-Caffe is just an agent of Zion and the whole Hizbollah bullshit is just a prelude to the war Mr Netanjahu and Lockheed-Martin yearn for. The meme works like "America...hizbolla....Iran....MakeProperWarAndSellF16SpareParts". Of course the F16 thing will not be publicized by the mainstream media suckers of Zion.
The government of Belize will not actively knock over a rich American/USian as that could easily bring a "freedom revolution" or "Contras" or "a coup d'etat by a general" and the like. They are the whores of the US and they know.
You're not paranoid if people are actually trying to get you, no matter how drug-addled your brain is
the US has an extradition treaty with Belize
The extradition treaty of 2000 isn't the only one in play here.
The Treaty provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes:
taking the testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; locating or identifying persons; serving documents; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to immobilization and forfeiture of assets, restitution to the victims of crime and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the State from whom the assistance is requested.
I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty, and give its advice and consent to ratification.
GEORGE W. BUSH
TREATY WITH BELIZE ON MUTUAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE IN CRIMINAL MATTERS/a
John may be eccentric, but he could also be correct. Iran knows that in the event of a direct military clash with the US, it will lose. It must fight differently, and having terrorists in the US ready to carry out attacks (suicide, infrastructure bombing, etc.) would make sense in that regard. John's blog post is just showing how they may have gotten the terrorists into the US.
As usual.
Why the fuck do the slashdot editors give a shit about some loser that hasn't done anything in a decade?
How much does this asshole pay you guys?
I knew the story was laughable when I read "Belize" and "Elite" in the same title.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Why did he spy on the government in the first place?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
"'I purchased 75 cheap laptop computers and, with trusted help, intalled invisible keystroke logging software on all of them... began giving these away as presents to select people..."
Translation:
"'I purchased 75 cheap Windows laptop computers and, with trusted help, intalled invisible Windows-based keystroke logging software on all of them... began giving these away as presents to select Windows-using people..."
This is why you don't completely trust hardware. Ever.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.