McAfee antivirus founder, John McAfee, has lead an extremely colourful life; and it is about to get even more interesting. The millionaire has announced that he will be founding a new political party and is running for President of the United States in the next General election.
McAfee has not been associated with the company he founded since 1994, but has been an advocate for better cybersecurity. He spoke to Wired magazine about the possibility of entering politics, and was originally consider founding a party and have someone else run for him. However, McAfee appears to have decided to take matters into his own hands and join the presidential race citing the government’s technological illiteracy as a primary motivation.
The new Cyber Party, with McAfee at the head, appears to be running on the principles of increased privacy and protection for personal data. McAfee believes that the current government does not understand technology enough to legislate on it, and the continued attempts to force technology companies to build backdoors into their software will only increase the number of successful hacking attempts.
With that in mind, McAfee has been borderline paranoid about personal information and privacy. The self proclaimed eccentric millionaire often asks friends to buy electronic devices for him instead of having to register his own name, and has been known to change his IP address several times a day.
He has also been on the wrong side of the law after fleeing his home in Belize after police sought him for questioning over the murder of his neighbour. McAfee suspected that the authorities would kill him if he ended up in custody and lived on the run from the law until he was arrested in Guatemala and deported back to America.
While McAfee’s personal life falls on the somewhat insane side, he does bring up several important issues about technology and the government. Privacy is a massive issue for people around the world, and it is becoming an increasing struggle in the US to fend off government surveillance.
[Source: Ars Technica, Wired, McAfee16]
