A security company mogul revealed an
idea for a device that would help users thwart online surveillance, like
that conducted by the National Security Agency, and also make the
Internet “hack-proof.”
John McAfee, founder of McAfee Inc.,
sat in cargo pants, a black hoodie and Nikes at the C2SV Technology
Conference + Music Festival in San Jose over the weekend, talking about a
pocket-size device that would cost less than $100. He said it would
create a mobile, encrypted network that makes it impossible to tell “who
is doing what, when or where.”
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John McAfee speaks at C2SV Technology Conference
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McAfee said he has been thinking about the product called D-Central made through his new company Future Tense Central for years.
“I can’t get out of security,” he said.
“For some reason, it’s part of my brain, part of my thinking. And we
don’t have much anymore, certainly not in the online world.
“The NSA helped create every single
encryption algorithm that we use,” McAfee alleged, ” therefore, they can
get access to whatever they want.”
The way McAfee explained it, the
D-Central hardware device and app would not only protect against spying
from government agencies but hackers as well.
“We live in a very insecure world with a very insecure communication platform,” he continued.
“This is coming and cannot be stopped.” — John McAfee on D-Central device.
McAfee described it as a “lower layer,”
“a localized dynamic network, where every local network is in constant
flux.” It would involve a portable device that allows people to create a
private network for select groups or join a public, yet still
localized, network.
“It has a range of about three blocks
in the city and about a quarter mile in the country,” he said. “And so,
everyone in that three blocks is communicating with everybody else in
those three blocks. But keep in mind, everybody is in a different
location, so everybody’s network is completely unique to themselves. It
changes as you move or as people move in and out of your local area.”
Put another way, he said “you’re
walking by, the devices are communicating with each other and one of
them says, ‘oh you want that file. Here it is.’ It doesn’t even ask who
you are. It doesn’t know who you are.”
The device doesn’t not have a unique
identifier because it changes, McAfee said. On a private network, on the
other hand, there is an name or ID associated with the activity on the
device.
“Even then, everything is encrypted, as with the public network,” he said.
“Since the networks are invisible to
each other and in constant flux, there is simply no way to tell who is
doing what, when or where.”
At this point, the design for D-Central is in place and his company is looking for partners to develop the hardware.
“I would say we’re six months out from our first prototype,” McAfee said.
Would people want it? McAfee thinks so.
“I can’t imagine every college student
in the world not standing in line to buy one of these. I believe that
everyone will want one — anyone who is concerned about privacy, anyone
who is concerned about security.”
McAfee acknowledged that the device
could be used to conduct illegal activity, but he said, to the applause
of the audience, so could telephones.
As for its legality, he said if the
device for some reason were banned in the U.S., he would “sell it in
England, Japan, the Third World.”
“This is coming and cannot be stopped,” he said, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
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