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John McAfee's Latest Project: Shielding Against Surveillance
Nerval's Lobster writes "Now that he's finished dodging law enforcement and experimenting with chemicals, software designer John McAfee (founder of his eponymous antivirus company) has been building something that, if it actually works, could appeal to the paranoid: a device that blocks the government's ability to spy on PCs and mobile devices. The device, known as 'Dcentral,' will reportedly cost around $100 and fit into a pants pocket. In a speech at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center over the weekend, McAfee suggested that the hardware would create private device networks impenetrable to outsiders, even those with the most sophisticated technology. The network's range would be roughly three blocks; McAfee believes that he can have a prototype up and running within six months. Whether or not McAfee manages to get that prototype working on schedule, he's already ramping up to the release of something, having set up a 'Future Tense Central' Website with a countdown clock, a sleek logo, and a set of social-media buttons. McAfee is such an outsized figure ('I've always wandered close to the edge,' he once confessed to an audience) that it's sometimes tempting to take his latest claims with a moon-sized grain of salt—this is the same man, after all, who says he avoided a police manhunt in Belize by dressing up as a drunk German tourist. (And he's unafraid to parody his own Wild Man reputation online.) That aside, he's also an executive with a record of starting a financially successful company, which means that—no matter what else he's done in the intervening years—it's likely that he'll attract a little bit of attention, if not some funding, with his latest endeavor."
That is a really boring and unhelpful name for it.
I'll be really sad if the actual name of the device isn't "Fakeblock".
Onion Pi
Early testers have noted they "feel quite anonymous and undetectable" wearing the tinfoil hat, with no less than three extra layers of tinfoil to keep the NSA out.
For an extra $50, users can get a banner reading "Don't mind me, I'm anonymous." attached at no extra cost.
Have you read my journal today?
i think its called "Fake block"
This isn't news. You can already do this by buying the kit from adafruit.com or by buying one already built at PAPARouter.com(It's in the .sig). In short, Raspberry Pi + Debian + Tor. If you're browsing, make sure to use https everywhere.
He must be really tired from trying to stay relevant.
Well, going from anti-virus to full blown snake oil is not a complete change of direction.
Rethinking email
EFF.org has a great page about why https is so important to use with Tor. Also don't use Windows......ever
If I didn't know about his habit of shoving bath salts up his poop chute, I might ask what is he smoking.
.. staying relevant, supporting his ex-stripper bride and not going totally broke.
Seriously though, I love this guy. Who needs "Bering Sea Gold Dredgers", "Duck Dynasty" or "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" when Johnny Mac is out there, popping up in my news feeds like the lovably insane, Hunter S. Thompson-ish "tech Uncle" for us to slowly laugh at before going back to work?
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Private mesh networks are harder to surveil in their entirety than the current internet. Could the NSA put nodes across the country to get back to intercepting all traffic? Sure. But they'd have to do that - to be even more obvious about ubiquitous surveillance. If that sort of thing has become politically acceptable, then all hope is indeed lost. But there's at least a chance it would be a bridge too far.
OTOH, let's see him actually deliver. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you can stop those who are out to get you.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Staying in the headlines.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, something like TOR/Freenet on top of one is a neat idea. Those technologies have difficult problems with attackers who observe all nodes. Surveilling most traffic on a mesh network isn't all that hard, as most of it will need to reach commercial sites at some point, or otherwise take many hops, but surveilling most nodes would take serious work. But, again, far easier to talk about than to do (and get right), and of course there are other attacks against TOR et al.
If you see the problem as "can we keep the NSA from spying on anyone", well, no we can't (and we probably shouldn't) keep them from specific people they want to hack. If you see the problem as "can we keep the NSA from spying on everyone, all at once", that's a much more reasonable goal.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I fully agree, their work can be made a lot harder, and given their unwillingness to comply with the Constitution, the courts, and their own charter, it should be.
Tor over a mesh network does exactly that.
My objection is to calling any such solution impenetrable.
I doubt McAfee is building anything. He has admitted that he is a crap coder and pretty much paid engineers to write his AV software when he was in charge of the company. I doubt he can even remember how to write code. Most likely he had this idea and decided to throw some money at people to build it for him and then slap his name on it.
Though as much as I think he is a megalomaniacal attention whore, if he has the money and it can benefit people by creating a secure, isolated network then i'm all for it. Just don't tell people YOU are building it. Tell them, you are funding it.
Can I get this as a Tin Foil Cod Piece (+5 ELF Shield)? Makes a great pair with my current Tin Foil Hat. Many thanks.
shoving bath salts up his poop chute
That's a misnomer for methylenedioxypyrovalerone.
No, that was a misnomer for his anus.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.