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drivebyacct2

Sounds like John may have been a step ahead. (He claims to have editted the EXIF data in an apology to VICE mag.)

http://www.whoismcafee.com/another-apology/

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Calling shenanigans on this one. McAffee is almost certainly bluffing.

It does kind of seem like, if it was a ruse, he wouldn't want to tell anyone that it was.

It could also be a double-bluff - by looking clumsy, he sends attention to this place where he's not.

You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia"

Risk2210: or the moon. Nuke commander!

This. He acts incredibly paranoid - a lot of what he puts online is misinformation to protect himself. When he fled the country he made sure to write blog posts and report to others that he'd lost all of his money (since there's still a wrongful death suit with his name on it).

I'm sure he freaked out when the metadata was uncovered - probably fled Guatemala immediately.

He says I, for my own safety, manipulated the xif data on the image taken from my cellphone, and created a fake emrgency so that the urgency of movement led, as I knew it would, to the hasty posting on their website.

Spelling mistakes aside, what does that even mean? The first part I can parse; but what fake emergency? What urgency of movement? Is he referring back to the posts about his being caught? And he manipulated the EXIF to trick Vice to make them blog about it more rapidly?

Perhaps his goal was to bring attention to the EXIF issue. Not enough people realize that their location is transparently embedded in the photos they take. This should be an opt-in feature that the user has to work for to enable. It should never be an option that I might accept by hitting "OK" to many times.

Seems like an odd crusade to go on. Worthy certainly, but I would be surprised if he were taking the time to go on such crusades at a time like this.

My guess is he just fucked up. Paranoid != Smart/careful.

I think McAffee means to claim the photo was taken and the EXIF data was manipulated on his iPhone, then he created a 'fake emergency' and told the Vice reporters they would have to move urgently so that they would post the photo online immediately.

Obvious question: Who is more likely to be waving an iPhone around; the extremely paranoid McAffee who has been on the run for weeks, presumably without a stable source of electricity, or the Vice reporters who have just been flown in, presumably from London?

How does he update his blog multiple times a day without power of some kind?

He has pre-written material that someone else is posting on his behalf. He claims to have up to a year of blog posts written up on the event of his capture.

Only a severely paranoid person would take the time to write a year's worth of blog entries on the off chance he became a fugitive. Even then, what advantage does it give him? Some misdirection, certainly, but simply disappearing would be just as effective.

Occam suggests he IS writing the blog entries, and I'd say the GPS coords are accurate via the same reasoning.

And looking at the bigger picture, his behaviour suggests he was intimately involved in the murder. I don't know much about Belize's police force, but I would be surprised if he was at a greater risk of death by cooperating with them than by going on the run - particularly with his fame.

In fact his behaviour reminds me most of Charlie Sheen's drug-addled antics last year. Sad to see someone fall so far.

> Only a severely paranoid person would take the time to write a year's worth of blog entries on the off chance he became a fugitive. Even then, what advantage does it give him? Some misdirection, certainly, but simply disappearing would be just as effective.

McAffee stated this in one of his earlier blog posts [1]. The blog is administered by a third party, and although a lot of the content is written by McAffee, most of it appears to be pre-prepared.

[1] http://www.whoismcafee.com/if-i-am-captured/

Yeah, it's like a bad spy movie where the villain is sure to explain his plan to everyone so that the good guys can swoop in just as he's finished telling his plan.

Wow, what cunning genius to explain your ruse. Live blogging your flee from authority is just well... dumb...

Here's an idea, get the hell out of South America and shut up.

Well....that sounds simplistic, but suppose he doesn't want to leave South America. Why should he?

The way he stays alive is by staying in the public eye.

It makes total sense for him to do what he wants to do.

  Well....that sounds simplistic, but suppose he doesn't 
  want to leave South America. Why should he?

To avoid bad and corrupt justice systems he seems to think will torture/wrongly convict/murder him?

(Belize and Guatemala aren't in South America.)

Whatever happened, I am disappointed they are going to part ways. I think that vice reporting on his life would have been very interesting.

kwestin, you've been hellbanned - no idea why, looks like a mistake to me.

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