Where do we start with John McAfee? You may more commonly associate the name with the cybersecurity product; the late entrepreneur did indeed found McAfee Associates Inc before disassociating himself in 1994 only six years later. In his latter years, McAfee advocated for privacy and railed against tech’s aggressive encroachment on human rights.
“Our mobile phones have become the greatest spy on the planet.”
The spy in your pocket
Making a surprise speech at DEF CON 22 in Las Vegas, in 2014, McAfee focused on privacy, the dangers of smartphone apps, and the implications on increased surveillance for the future.
Although McAfee had a set of unique experiences on the subject, having experienced frequent cyberattacks and, of course, his involvement in crime and controversy, his words spoke to the ongoing encroachment on civil liberties by big tech and governments.
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The comments were made shortly after the Edward Snowden disclosures that started the year before. They were also made in the context of massively increased data harvesting by social media companies and hardware manufacturers intent on using customer data to make money.
Before he died in June 2021, McAfee even launched his own phone. The Privacy Phone, announced in April 2018, was an Android handset that included hardware-layer security.
Tick to consent
There’s much to say about how attitudes to privacy have shifted in the last decade – with more people seemingly comfortable with the further encroachment on civil liberties and privacy by tech giants. This is despite major attempts to safeguard user privacy, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
You can see, for example, the way that cookie walls have become commonplace, which most users of digital goods and services tick away as soon as they’re able to. There’s also a new dimension to user privacy courtesy of the rise of AI and the way it has scraped so much training data from the web. Smart glasses, too, pose challenges.
As these systems become more embedded in many aspects of our lives, there’s a greater need for systems to protect user privacy, according to research.
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