Now that he's finished dodging law enforcement and experimenting with
chemicals, software designer John McAfee (founder of his eponymous
antivirus company) has been building something that, if it actually works, could appeal to the paranoid:
a device that blocks the government's ability to spy on PCs and mobile
devices. The device, known as 'Dcentral,' will reportedly cost around
$100 and fit into a pants pocket. In a speech at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center over the weekend,
McAfee suggested that the hardware would create private device networks
impenetrable to outsiders, even those with the most sophisticated
technology. The network's range would be roughly three blocks; McAfee
believes that he can have a prototype up and running within six months.
Whether or not McAfee manages to get that prototype working on schedule,
he's already ramping up to the release of something, having set up a 'Future Tense Central' Website
with a countdown clock, a sleek logo, and a set of social-media
buttons. McAfee is such an outsized figure ('I've always wandered close
to the edge,' he once confessed to an audience) that it's sometimes
tempting to take his latest claims with a moon-sized grain of salt—this
is the same man, after all, who says he avoided a police manhunt in
Belize by dressing up as a drunk German tourist. (And he's unafraid to
parody his own Wild Man reputation online.) That aside, he's also an
executive with a record of starting a financially successful company,
which means that—no matter what else he's done in the intervening
years—it's likely that he'll attract a little bit of attention, if not
some funding, with his latest endeavor
