“John McAfee isn’t telling you the truth—but he says he’s lying for a good cause,” William Turton reports for The Daily Dot. “McAfee has been on a media tour discussing a court order that directs Apple to write custom code to help the FBI access a terrorist’s iPhone. The method McAfee says he would use to break open the phone, he admitted to The Daily Dot, is false. ”
“McAfee, who founded of one of the first companies to offer antivirus software, claimed on CNN and Russia Today, as well as in a Business Insider column, that he could bypass the advanced encryption protecting the iPhone without Apple’s help,” Turton reports. “But he lied in those interviews, he told The Daily Dot, to ‘get a shitload of public attention.'”
“Further, the method McAfee says is real—the one he says he’s lying to try to hide—is neither a secret nor feasible for anyone to accomplish without expensive tools and specialized skills. Even then, experts believe it would be difficult and would risk destroying the data the FBI is fighting so hard to access,” Turton reports. “McAfee said he bent the truth in order to push back against the official narrative. ‘By doing so, I knew that I would get a shitload of public attention, which I did,’ McAfee said. ‘That video, on my YouTube account, it has 700,000 views. My point is to bring to the American public the problem that the FBI is trying to [fool] the American public. How am I going to do that, by just going off and saying it? No one is going to listen to that crap. So I come up with something sensational…'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looney Tunes.
SEE ALSO:
Would you like that shoe broiled, poached, or fried, John McAfee? Because you don’t know how iPhones work – March 2, 2016
John McAfee reveals how the FBI can unlock an iPhone in 30 minutes – March 2, 2016
John McAfee blasts FBI for ‘illiterate’ order to create Apple iPhone backdoor – February 23, 2016
Libertarian U.S. presidential candidate John McAfee offers to unlock terrorist’s iPhone for FBI – February 19, 2016
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TJ” for the heads up.]
Ah the ends justifies the means. What a stalwart demonstration of the values embraced by this nation. Sensationalism without substance, a great cover on a blank books, the value of their loads has been made clear once again.
Yup when it comes to loads, it’s mission accomplished.
LOL. The values embraced by this nation? All of a sudden McAffee speaks for all Americans? I see you are addicted to overgeneralization.
Then again, you reason like a child because you want to avoid any responsibility for what you do. If we’re all guilty, then you don’t feel so bad.
No it’s the the other way around, McAffee speaks likes he has embraced the values of the nation. It’s trendalization, not a generalization. A trend would be say, a certain percentage of people from the country share of a certain historical cultural background, a generalization would be that people who drive in that country drive on the right hand side of the road.
The rest of your diatribe is smoke and mirrors conjecture, I’m responsible for my feelings, not you.
Method is secondary to effect – in short, ethics are inconvenient.
I would hope this means NO journalist will ever give him the time of day in the future.
My hope is certainly ill-fated.
Thats like asking the pot to review the kettle, jounalists are even worse.
Wasn’t John McAfee in the news a few years ago, something him being on the run from the law, after he apparently killed a tourist with a shotgun? I forget how that situation got resolved. Surprised to find out McAfee’s not locked up somewhere right now. All I remember clearly from reading about that at the time was that this McAfee guy was a serious out his freaking mind whacko.
I called lier since the beggining.
Also, we need to clarify the following: “..risk destroying the data the FBI is fighting so hard to access,”
No, FBI is not trying so hard to access that information, what the FBI is trying very hard is to set a precedent so they and the NSA can stick their noses in the private life of the good citizens that pay their salaries.
This is America today. Lies are truth. Black is white. Wrong is right. Hate is love and Trump “tells it like it is!”
And you are part of the problem, as you lie by omission.
Are even aware that it is your buddy, President Obama himself, who is responsible for this entire mess with wanting all iPhones unlocked?
Quit trying to make this a political situation. Pull your head out of your own ass (if possible), and realize that Obama and Trump have EXACTLY THE SAME POSITION ON THIS ISSUE. We should all be alarmed that the majority of our so-called leaders of both major parties are willing to ignore the majority opinion of Americans on this issue.
1. Learn to read the facts
2. Learn to comprehend and draw conclusions
3. Learn that some issues we face are more important than petty political posturing
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html?_r=0&referer=http://macdailynews.com/2016/02/28/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-n-s-a-intercepts/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-19/secret-memo-details-u-s-s-broader-strategy-to-crack-phones
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/technology/apples-privacy-fight-tests-relationship-with-white-house.html?referer=http://macdailynews.com/2016/02/29/apple-ceo-cook-decried-obamas-lack-of-leadership-on-encryption-during-a-closed-door-meeting-last-month/
McAfee didn’t lie, he “bent the truth”
Yea, he’ll make a good politician.
Goes to show you something about the ethics of libertarians.
So, if he lied about being able to getting into the iPhone, did he (and other antivirus software companies) lie about virus attacks being on the rise for the Macintosh?
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean antivirus software companies, I meant “Security Experts” 😉
WHO exactly is saying that virus attacks are on the rise on the Macintosh? I’d enjoy kicking their ass.
1) The term is ‘malware’. Viruses are a sub-group. There have not been ANY actual ‘viruses’ for OS X. But there have been somewhere around 100 different malware for OS X since its debut, not counting malware variants.
2) Nasty old Symantec originated the ‘Macs are doomed to have as much malware as Windows’ back in the spring of 2005. They also perpetrated the ‘security through obscurity’ myth. I specifically thank Symantec’s asinine marketing deceit as the reason I became interested in Mac security.
3) OS X has had specifically a rise in the number of adware programs infecting Macs. It is debatable whether these programs are ‘malware’ because they are legal to provide to users, legal to install and use. Well, mostly. They’re more annoyanceware than malware. Social engineering is commonly used to fool victims into installing the crap. Supposedly reputable sites like CNET and even MacUpdate foist the stuff on unwitting victims. Good anti-malware programs, such as Intego’s VirusBarrier, are able to identify and remove adware.
4) The only recent actual malware we’ve seen for Mac in many months is the new OSX.Ransomware.KeRanger.A malware nefariously embedded into forged versions of Transmission, the torrenting application. Apple provided a swift response to detect it, and prevent it from installing via Gatekeeper and Xprotect. The developers of Transmission also provided an update that in and of itself will remove the malware. So far, we’ve heard of one victim of the ransomware in total. There are probably more, but not many more thanks to Apple’s and the Transmission developer’s response.
John McAfee Challenges Critics — “I’m Not An Idiot. Let’s Code And I Will Kick Your Ass.”
“And I know — I know, to the Reddit crowd, I probably look like the stupidest man on the planet. Well, I don’t give a flying . . .”