John McAfee Airs His Beefs About Privacy In Def Con Surprise Talk

John McAfee made a surprise appearance at Def Con to talk about privacy: he's for it. Trouble is, he says, lots of companies feel otherwise, and he took the stage to single out "don't be evil" Google: “Google, or at least certain people within Google, I will not mention names because I am not a rude gentleman, would like us to believe that if we have nothing to hide, we should not mind if everybody knows everything that we do,” he said from the podium. “I have to take serious issue with that.” The BBC has video. McAfee also announced his new complaints website, The Brown List. (Good usernames are still available, and your complaint can be about anything, not just privacy violations by humongous corporations.)

Comments

Re:Why?

[redeIm]

Because his arguments stand on their own merits.

Privacy is an illusion

[cl3v3r]

A compelling illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. The metadata generated by even the most privacy conscious individual leaves a mark, and given the resources of an interested government, only the most dedicated living off the grid can escape their view.

The only thing we have going for us, is that the vast majority of us won't raise the eyebrows of any government employees in our lifetimes. The sad part is that a lonely few will, and they'll be dealt with unfairly and harshly.

The general masses don't have much to fear, but anyone who raises the ire of a nameless bureaucrat will.

Re:Privacy is an illusion

[Anonymous Coward]

> A compelling illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

Absolute privacy is an illusion. In the real world privacy is a spectrum. Just because your friends know something about you doesn't mean anyone else should know it too.

> the vast majority of us won't raise the eyebrows of any government employees in our lifetimes.

Government is not the problem, imbalance of power is the problem. The lose of privacy is ultimately the loss of personal autonomy -- it doesn't matter if you lose that autonomy to a government bureau or to a corporation, you've still lost it to an organization that is more powerful than you.

You have zero privacy now, get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun Microsystem's Scott McNealy made that prescient quote back in something like 1998. He may have been thinking partly about Google, but he was really talking about a trend that would occur regardless of whether Google was around to help lead the way.

There's a lot of surprising consequences of the Internet, big data, mobile computing, and robotics that help and hurt people and professions and entire industries. It's an upheaval not unlike the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th century.

Black Fly in your Chardonnay, etc, etc...

[Zanadou]

It's somewhat ironic that after his rant against Google, I go to sign up for brownlist.com and I see a "Login with Facebook" link, along with pages and pages of 'Terms of Use' buried in a pdf file.

Pretty impressive, actuallyâ¦

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Most people would likely get thrown off the stage at DEF CON for using it to promote their business in such a fashion. Instead, Mr. McAfee gets applause and people lining up to take photos with him.

Aside from that, the whole concept of simultaneously railing against the erosion of privacy while creating a web site that encourages people to share private information (without much information about how it will be safely secured) that is possibly libelous and may even be criminal at times is, well, going to be interesting. Especially with a FAQ which states things like " Yes, any entity can respond to a complaint. However, if the entity is not a subscriber, the response will not be featured in the official response section." and " It must not be possible for information on the site to be altered for any purpose."

It is going to be very interesting to see how this latest business venture of Mr. McAfee's turns out.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky