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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.
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
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.
Sure, why not. At least I want to see how this crazy story continues.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
I would like to extend the mandate for drone killings to people who decide that people should be killed because they're irritating.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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.
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 would like to extend the mandate for drone killings to people who decide that people should be killed because they're irritating.
You irritate me.
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'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
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
When are you sending a drone to attack me?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's the Norton Antivirus people sponsoring McAfee stories. Duh.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
This is why you don't completely trust hardware. Ever.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.