Guatemala on Wednesday put antivirus pioneer John McAfee aboard an airliner bound for Miami, deporting the former software tycoon to his native United States rather than to Belize, which he fled amid an inquiry into the murder of a fellow American.
“I’m being expelled,” McAfee told Bloomberg TV minutes before his midafternoon departure. “I have no choice in the matter. However, I am perfectly happy with the decision.”
McAfee, 67, caused an international stir with his escape a month ago from Belize, replete with breathless blog postings alleging persecution and calls and emails to foreign journalists to update them on his underground journey, his 20-year-old girlfriend at his side.
McAfee became a “subject of interest” to Belizean police after the killing Nov. 11 of an Orlando, Fla.-area building contractor at his home a few hundred yards from McAfee’s beachfront property on Ambergris Caye, a tropical retirement destination near the world’s second longest barrier reef.
The murder victim, Gregory Faull, had quarreled with McAfee about the former software tycoon’s dogs and his penchant for wandering the area armed.
In typical fashion, McAfee’s final hours in Guatemala saw him swing between concern about the strains his plight had put on the Central American country and anger at journalists following his movements.
McAfee told Bloomberg that he’d penned an apology to Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina “for putting him in a very slippery position in the negotiations of a peace treaty with Belize.”
Guatemala and Belize have been embroiled in a territorial dispute for more than a century. Guatemala claims the southern half of tiny Belize as its own.
In a separate blog posting under what McAfee later said was a pen name, he lashed out at Vice Magazine, saying the outlet released a photograph carrying embedded location data about his whereabouts nine days ago, hoping that two journalists traveling with him would have “exclusive access” to his arrest.
McAfee said he would “terminate all contact with Vice.”
McAfee, an avid disciple of yoga and user of superlight aircraft and firearms, wanted people to keep their distance from his Belize home. Outside was posted a sign that read: “Never mind the dog, beware of owner.” Even so, he seemed to feed on attention from the media, chain smoking while offering interviews.
Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow called McAfee “bonkers” after he went underground, and the fugitive had both detractors who called him paranoid and unstable, allegedly exacerbated by a fondness for synthetic drugs, and admirers of his free-flowing, adventurous lifestyle.
McAfee reported during his three-week flight before turning up in Guatemala on Dec. 5 that he had slept in lice-infested huts to escape arrest by police.
McAfee made a fortune when he took public his software company, which bore his name and has become synonymous with protecting computers from viruses. He sold the company in 1994 and eventually moved to Belize in 2008, where he donated a $1 million coastal vessel to local law enforcement.
Belize and the United States signed an extradition treaty in March 2000, but as long as McAfee is not formally charged with a crime in Belize he appears safe from extradition while in the United States.
He told Bloomberg that he is still willing to speak with police in Belize – just not in person – about the murder of Faull, who was killed with a 9mm gunshot to the head.
Dash, by Devium, is a new concept for an all-purpose infotainment system that pairs with a smartphone and smartphone-driven apps to heighten the driving experience. Founder Paul Lizer decided to develop Dash to integrate an iPhone, Android, or Windows smartphone into any car dashboard. “It is time to rescue your phone from the cupholder,” Lizer says.
Dash consists of two parts, the Dash Head Unit and the Dash Faceplate. The Head Unit is the piece that physically replaces the current stereo on the dashboard. The Faceplate is what connects the smartphone to the Head Unit. The audio system integrated into the Head Unit is nothing less than state of the art. People generally tend to upgrade their cell phones faster than they upgrade their cars, but Dash can handle a smartphone upgrade – say from a Windows device to an iPhone – with no changes at all.
When docked with Dash, the smartphone becomes totally hands free. For example, phone calls can be made in landscape view and the audio will be played over the car speakers thanks to integrated Bluetooth. With speech-to-text programs, text messaging is possible as well. “We want to replace the layer of redundant car stereo technology with the superior touchscreen, voice actions, and media access consumers already pay for,” says Lizer. On top of all this, Dash also charges the smartphone’s battery.
The display on the smartphone contains the most frequently used apps alongside information on the simple things: weather, driving directions, audio music playing, and phone settings. Fear not, fans of local AM/FM radio: stations function as well as they ever have with the added benefit of streaming Internet radio, like Pandora or Spotify.
In addition to all the features of Dash, the team behind the product continually strives to fulfill their mission of creating a safe driving experience by making many operations on the phone hands free. And if there was any shadow of a doubt about Dash, it has already received $72,000 in funding from Kickstarter.
Once again, we are witness to the inherent weakness in the federal government’s policies for securing its most precious resource: information.
The largest threat we face today is from a cyber attack or security breach that results in highly classified information ending up in the wrong hands. And as disturbing as Delisle’s actions are, equally troubling is the subsequent confusion on the handling of classified documents.
CBC News reported, “that electronic records detailing the planned overhaul of Canadian naval intelligence — created when admitted Russian spy Jeffrey Delisle was at the height of his treachery — were deleted from a National Defence database. But when the news agency asked why both the electronic and paper copies had been expunged, and whether that violated access-to-information law, the Navy eventually reversed itself and claimed some copies of the presentations had survived in email accounts of officers serving overseas.”
VPN solutions require hardware, software and IT resources to deploy and maintain. The cost and complexity can be significant. Because these solutions offer only single-factor authentication, many organizations add OTP tokens to create two-factor authentication, creating further cost and complexity for them and their users.
For any remote access technology to be effective, it must operate on the principle of assuring the identity of an individual, not a PC, tablet, smartphone or other computing apparatus.
Using technology that supports proper data entitlement policies is the most powerful way to mitigate risks. And only by requiring all data and internal files remain within an organization’s confines can we protect against unauthorized access.
We must hope for a universal paradigm shift in how the Armed Forces and other branches of government address cyber security going forward. Identity management, multi-factor authentication and data entitlement must be the foundation of any future efforts.
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