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Vice.com Reveals John McAfee's Location In iPhone Metadata
- drivebyacct2 14y agoSounds 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/ http://www.whoismcafee.com/another-apology/
- aes256 14y agoCalling shenanigans on this one. McAffee is almost certainly bluffing.
- sliverstorm 14y agoIt does kind of seem like, if it was a ruse, he wouldn't want to tell anyone that it was.
- vacri 14y agoIt could also be a double-bluff - by looking clumsy, he sends attention to this place where he's not.
- caycep 14y agoYou 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"
- contingencies 14y agoRisk2210: or the moon. Nuke commander!
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- jmcgough 14y agoThis. 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.
- kwestin 14y agoYeah I don't think that is true, why then did Vice.com pull the photo so fast after it was uncovered? Why not strip out the EXIF data altogether in the first place...or simply disable geo tagging on the phone. Why would he then even tell people he manipulated it...doesn't make sense.
- morsch 14y agoHe 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?
- sil3ntmac 14y agoPerhaps 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.
- kwestin 14y agoI actually count on it http://www.gadgettrak.com/blog/2011/08/24/photographer-recovers-9k-stolen-camera-equipment-thanks-to-gadgettrak/ http://www.gadgettrak.com/blog/2011/08/24/photographer-recov...
- jlgreco 14y agoSeems 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.
- aes256 14y agoI 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?
- glomph 14y agoWhatever happened, I am disappointed they are going to part ways. I think that vice reporting on his life would have been very interesting.
- anthonyb 14y agokwestin, you've been hellbanned - no idea why, looks like a mistake to me.
- alexanderh 14y agoJesus Vice staff are a bunch of children. "Suckers"? tags: "Suck it bitches" ? vice staff sure do have a case of tiny penis syndrome.
- glomph 14y agoI think you have to acknowledge that vice magazine is written with a certain amount of irony intended.
- chiquitabacana 14y agoIt seems people here at HN don't know much about vice and hard core hipster stuff. They only know node.js hipster.
- marcamillion 14y agoWhy would they post his location though...that's messed up. If he gets held by the authorities and executed, that blood is on the original poster's hands.
- alexanderh 14y agoThis is vice we're talking about. That would be welcome publicity to them. I'm just glad (yea, i'm rooting for McAfee) McAfee seems to be aware of the situation. Whether or not he's bluffing about the exif data being edited, at least he knows this is out there.
- marcamillion 14y agoWell Vice didn't post his location. They posted the photo. It's the mobile privacy guys that looked for the EXIF data and posted that.
- alexanderh 14y agoTrue, still, careless on Vice's behalf none the less. You'd think Vice would have some interest in protecting sources, I can remember them trying to pass for 'journalism' at least a few times. Why doesnt Vice's website CMS strip exif data from public facing images? Seems stupid. Sites like Imgur.com get this right.
- jonny_eh 14y agoAnd yet people complain that imgur strips exif data.
- pyre 14y agoStriping all exif data is maybe a little extreme, but striping most might not be that bad (i.e. create a white list of tags, things like rotation, etc). That said, in a case like this, it would make more sense to strip it all (maybe replace it with a copyright notice or something).
- w1ntermute 14y agoInteresting to see that Eugene Kaspersky[0], creator of McAfee competitor Kasperksy Anti-Virus, posted in the comments. Do these two know one another personally? 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kaspersky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kaspersky
- sprobertson 14y agoWith that comment form, anybody can be anybody.
- BerislavLopac 14y agoMore specifically: http://www.hotelmarinananajuana.com http://www.hotelmarinananajuana.com ;-)
- bsims 14y agoLink isn't working.
- ScottWhigham 14y agoSucks to see a "Website is currently unreachable" with a Cloudflare icon/logo/link at the bottom...
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoAny chance the picture itself is a fake? He looks like a cardboard cutout propped up against a bush.
- Dramatize 14y agoYes, that looks like a cardboard cutout. The lighting looks different on his arms.
- killahpriest 14y agoThe light source on the guy with the dark hair is from the right. The lighting on mcafee looks like its coming from straight ahead/beneath. Why is everybody falling for this? It looks so fake!
- anigbrowl 14y agoNot really, no. The light on the hands could just as easily be a reflection of something. I have a couple photos taken with a fancy canon SLR which have become a running joke in our household because they look so fake, but aren't.
- MemorableZebra 14y agoIt's also worth noting that the difference in lighting can be explained by the bamboo. The guy in the blue is getting direct sunlight from the right of the frame, but McAfee is, in part, shielded from it because of the plant. It probably isn't fake. The original image is also a better resolution where it looks much more real.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoWhere is that better resolution picture? All the ones I've seen look fake to me. And not because of lighting. The image of him just looks very flat. No depth. And the angles of his head to body look like a picture was taken of him at a slight angle, printed on a flat board and then placed straight to the camera.
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- danso 14y agoRegarding McAfee's explanation...how do we know that it was his phone used to take the photo and not VICE's? If you were a fugitive...why would you hand your phone over to anyone to take a photo...when it's just as easy for them to take the photo using their own camera? And who is likely to be too dumb to turn off mobile phone GPS? A fugitive or a writer? Also, as the OP points out, it's not usually the case that the escapee puts together a ruse and then exposes the ruse before it fools anyone. You usually do that after the authorities swoop down on the wrong location, if movies have taught me anything.
- ryanac 14y agoMaybe it's just me, but the photo itself looks very fake, specifically John McAfee, more specifically his head and the lighting. Why is his head distorted/skewed (on his left eye area, as if from the lens) when the other guys head isn't. There are way better compositors where I work, oh well maybe he just has a crooked smile/face. :P
- DigitalSea 14y agoI can't say for sure whether or not John McAfee is innocent or not, if he were to get caught he would not get a fair trial in the country where he currently resides. His money and assets would all be taken from him, he'd be thrown into a cell and possibly tortured. There is something about the way McAfee handles himself that leads me to believe this guy might have some mental issues and require attention of a medical professional, he is obviously paranoid and whether or not it's warranted, I think there's a bigger underlying issue here. Something seems fishy about all of this. The photo looks extremely fake (inconsistent lighting direction). Even if this were all true, why would Vice post the data including his address? If John were to be killed, the blood would be on Vice and the author's hands for getting him killed, where is the decency?
- andrewfelix 14y ago"His money and assets would all be taken from him, he'd be thrown into a cell and possibly tortured." He isn't in the backwater of Afghanistan, he's in a democratic country with an independent judiciary. What makes you think he would be tortured, let alone killed?
- jrockway 14y agoHe seems to suffer from interactions with corrupt police. They could certainly beat the shit out of him after arrest with very few consequences. That's true even in the US. As an example of special circumstances: how's Bradley Manning's trial coming along?
- andrewfelix 14y agoThat's a Logical fallacy. This has nothing to do with Bradley Manning. As far as you and I know Mcafee quite possibly killed his neighbour. Why shouldn't the authorities in the country where the crime was committed get hold of him? If the dead neighbour had been an American celebrity, this argument would sound very different.
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- arstudio 14y agoIf you want an easy way to read image metadata, check out the free iPhone App: Photo Investigator https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id571574618?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id571574618?mt=8
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- teflonhook 14y agoRUN JOHN RUN!!!!!!!! PS I WANT TO BUY THE MOVIE RIGHTS
- gunther69 14y agoOops
- ck2 14y agoThis is a man who purposely sent a double to the mexican border to get arrested. Impossible to really know if he is guilty or not but this is one crazy story.
- jrochkind1 14y agoI think you mean a man who says he sent a double to the mexican border to get arrested.
- TommyDANGerous 14y agoFunny read. I wonder what is happening with that guy.
- joejohnson 14y agoThis whole thing is hilarious: http://www.whoismcafee.com/another-apology/ http://www.whoismcafee.com/another-apology/ Also, why does he have like 40 ways to share an article? I'd never even heard of half of these social networks.
- w-ll 14y agoGood-old Wordpress plugins.
- erik518 14y agoAnyone interested in McAfee's story should listen to his recent (within the past few days) interview on Joe Rogan's podcast http://itun.es/i6Dv3dH http://itun.es/i6Dv3dH
- xmpir 14y agoMcAfee should have known better!
- lolcraft 14y agoLook, I get it, it's funny, but please stop throwing conspiratory shit around. The most likely explanation, by far, is that the photo is real and the EXIF tags are real. If the photo is not real, why care about the tags? You weren't there. And if the photo was real, but the tags are fake, why tell the police so? But if the photo is real, and the EXIF tags are real, then, and only then, it makes sense to claim you modified them to throw the cops around. Well, it makes sense only if you're delusional, naive or extremely desperate. Any of which could be applied to McAfee. Dude's psycho. Remember that story he posted about how he stood six hours in his porch at night while he was stalked by "cops hiding in bushes", waking up covered in puke and babbling? He's completely lost it. Those jerkass Vice guys should've just got him to a Guatemalan psychiatrist, instead of making "ironic" bitch jokes and laughing at a mentally disturbed person. Fucking hipsters make me sick. And yeah, the photo is real. Sure, the head is blurred, it looks fake. Just cover it with something and look at the body. Tada, it's real. The head distortion is just those fat fingers on cam sticking grease over the lens.
- sp332 14y ago"Desperate" about sums it up. Here's the latest bit, in which he retracts the other bit: http://www.whoismcafee.com/guatemala/ http://www.whoismcafee.com/guatemala/
- RenierZA 14y agoQuote: Vice Magazine reporters are indeed with me in Guatemala. Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters. We made it to safety in spite of this handicap. I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWhat is with the desire to villanize him? As much as people hate intrusive governments here, there is also this opinion that anyone who might be a criminal is just a shit person and deserves no respect. I'd call it resourceful. To have my location leaked like that and have the forethought to engage in that much subterfuge while physically fleeing?