there it was. on the t.v. . welcome to sophie and co on sophie shevardnadze and we have a very special guest today who seems to have tasted it all not sure of paranoia and has made fortunes in people's fear of internet viruses that worked on. in the jungle of bullies but had to flee in order to escape birder charges john mcafee what is he up to now. use drugs drugs guns poverty. freedom. has been on top of the world and on the road for his life. to speak since gone since. the. world was.

known for years until virus software. hi john it's very nice to have you on on the program so you last very unconventional life or idea of drugs millions woman lawsuits gun slaying the united states living in a jungle murder suspicions done escape back to the u.s. what are you up to right now. well right now i'm working on a project to provide more security for the internet. not just against hackers but also against. what everyone knows is government spying against the american citizens. it is natural i think for government governments to want to spy on their populations in some circumstances but it's also natural i think for people to want their privacy so so i'm working on

a product which will ensure that privacy for american citizens so do you still have troubles with a law in the united states which is what you nationally flat from no i have i have no trouble with the law here in the u.s. i really didn't have trouble with the law in beliefs i left police because of an ongoing feud between myself and the government which ended badly. but here in america i've been here for a year i have no problem with the u.s. government i am a taxpaying citizen and a productive citizen and i'm treated very well by the authorities here i'm working on a couple of movies a couple of books. and a biography is being written that keeps me busy my own technical projects so i i keep i keep very busy i live in portland oregon very beautiful part of america now for your a gentle i believe years sixty eight right here who just took and may

think you have this crazy energy level of a young man you're almost like dorian gray what do you you do. you know i again i thank you very much for the compliment. i'm not sure what i do i just just get up early and work hard and i don't eat right i sometimes smoke cigarettes i do all the wrong things. i'm not sure. the comparison to dorian gray is a little bit disconcerting because dorian gray was in fact a very. very cruel and. evil person and i hope that that part does not apply and i know you're going to buy a linux on aging gentleman while his is painting. i understand yeah well i'm not sure again i thank you for the compliment i'm feeling younger every moment as you as you talk to me that way. now you claim you've stayed sober from from drugs and alcohol for over thirty seven years although in some ways you appeared to

almost advertise trucks where do you stand i just want to make sure and may be clear are drugs bad evil and they should be banned or people should make their own choice. well i think people need to make their own choice in every aspect of their lives that once you become an adult a freedom of choice is and then they write i think. i have never advertised drugs and in fact i advise everyone including my my daughter and my close friends not to take drugs under any circumstances. i did so in the past a lot of drugs actually and so i do have experience very negative experience from from drug use but people should be allowed to make their own choice. and i'm not i'm not trying to. advertise drugs i'm not trying to get people other than my close friends and relatives to not do drugs it's your personal choice and your choices in

life will come back to you and you will learn yourself what is right and wrong for you what do you want the silk road was busted as to align black market what do you make of that. that was shut down you can't stop these things as or there's always been a black market underground black market for anything you know people can buy illegal guns you can bridge drugs are really black market items. you know human trafficking this has existed since the beginning of man and now that we have the electronic age you cannot expect that that will not also occur in the internet in the electronic world. the fact that it was shut down was was a mistake on the part of the founder. but trust me someone will come up with the equivalent that simply can't be shut down talking about electronic age technology in your opinion does it empower our enslave you. well if that does

both and again there is where you are have freedom of choice technology has given us the smartphone which will allow us to communicate across the world sometimes looking at the person's face while we're speaking it allows us to access information powerful information while we're in travelling on trains or buses or or sitting in a restaurant or at our office at the same time it can in slaven if you look around you'll see those who are enslaved you can walk into many restaurants at lunchtime and look at the people over half of them are not looking at their partner or the person they're sitting across the table from they're looking down at their smartphone and texting. as sometimes everybody is doing that that seems like slavery to me where you are enslaved to the device to the point that you completely block out human presence and i think that's a very bad sign we need to we need to use technology for what technology is

intended for automobiles to get us places faster telephones so that we don't have to run across town to talk to somebody but when they become our masters then we become the enslaved i want to talk a bit about the central it's a decentralized encrypted wireless network that you've been working on trying to figure out the motives behind are you worried about everyone being spied on are you making a political stand do you have a political stand. i have no political stance i believe that. it does not matter eventually what party is in power. the political process goes on as it always will power corrupts people in power tend to do what all people in power do i don't have a political stance i do have a stance as an individual and as a member of society i do not want someone looking through my bedroom window whether it's an impartial observer or not whether they're going to prosecute me or not i

want to some privacy to do the things that we as human beings need privacy for and we're losing that we're losing that to a great extent and it's not just the n.s.a. by the way that is spying on us i mean the n.s.a. was the one that was first outed by edward snowden but i can guarantee you that all other covert government agencies of which there are more than fifteen are doing the same thing the cia the f.b.i. military intelligence. we know it's happening and that alarms me truly alarms me that's not what we created government for we didn't create a government that could watch over us and keep us safe from ourselves we created a government so that it could provide facilities to make life reasonable roads schools all the things that government should be doing this simply is not correct and so i needed to do something talk to me about the central is this something that can be globally engaged or it's more of

a local thing. oh it can definitely be globally engaged it's a completely flexible and moving localized network where every every other unit within a quarter of mile radius is directly communicating with your unit we have relays that can relay things across the city the state the country or the entire planet and it will not replace the internet certainly not at first it is an augment to the internet it is a it is a device without a screen it's an on off switch you drop it in your pocket it communicates with your smartphone so if you're on the internet with a smartphone you can do whatever you're doing if you want to send someone a private message something to your sweetheart and you want to say something juicy or or to your business associate talking about a plan that you do not want your competitors or know about then you switch to the private network which is ours and everything is absolutely secure number one if you

intercept a packet it has no name is a tad stupid or location either there's no way to tell who is sending want to whom . and it is all encrypted using it's an encryption technique that the n.s.a. nor any other agency was involved in. it's simply cannot be seen and can't be seen and it can't be hacked you know brazil is trying to create their breaks cable that's an internet system independent of the u.s. and britain and that's to avoid n.s.a. spying do you back that idea. well it won't fly it won't fly for the long term because any system that is that is completely disconnected from the internet will suffer from lack of totality. you you cannot get a bridge from one network to another network which provides the security that you need because once you get into the internet the big network it's all gone it's fair

game again. i think that a governmental or a private entity which is not global will have a very difficult time flying have you ever suspected the n.s.a. of spying on you personally. well that's an interesting question. to be frank with you given given my public exposure in my past life i would be shocked if the n.s.a. was not spying on me nor the cia nor the f.b.i. i mean think about it if you know the four for example two months of last year i was in top of the presses as a potential meth lab manufacturer possible murder someone involved with a foreign government back in the states can you imagine if someone said by the way what is mcafee doing and they go oh we're not watching him. that would be strange ordinates or perhaps i really am paranoid now it would be strange indeed now let's

take a short break but we'll be back with technology. to discuss whether paranoia creates a good business opportunity and what software does not. stay with us. from some of the sixty percent ports came from. the european union ironically taking fish from some of the poorest nations on earth so this is a very serious and very urgent problem that needs immediate international action.

territorial waters they fish they load the fish into the ships and leave. illegal fishing just taking the bread out of our mouths. if you. nothing and you've got no opportunity. to start to construct your own. olympian bit gives don't want to meet gangstas they don't want to be drug deals they don't want to blow with all the time that a kid came to be we can see. you just means zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero problems in the hood and with a variable thirty round clip taking. about i said.

i don't want to die i just really do not want to die young young age.

and. i. welcome back i'm talking to john mcafee a legendary software durable great to have you back now i heard you say that if you were google and the government ask you for information he had handed over just like google did why. it was in one of your interviews that yes i mean. keep in mind the government does not comment just politely ask you said oh gee will you please hand over this information the government comes with with a a series of very scary powers auditors there are the potential for auditors.

regulations and rules that could shut you down i mean if you were to absolutely say no to like the n.s.a. . you know and from google's position at this early point in google's life it would it would it might mean the end. when i said i would i said in the given the same circumstances that google's and i would probably do the same thing. i'm not going to structure my my system in my country my company in the same way that google is there will be overseas locations that i can continue operating in the u.s. government wants to shut me down in my case i would i would definitely send them away say no this is the problem we use the u.s. regulations in the u.s. system to to create our businesses and then we are in their hands in their power. you would be crazy if you were google not to give them the information here from an

observer spawn of you i can see american society increasingly unhappy with what's going on in their country and their government where do you stand. well you know this is america and i am an american i was born and raised here and i love my country that does not mean that i love the political process or the political evolution the obviously i mean obviously we cannot be happy knowing that our every move could be watched by someone in the government that's that's that's simply not excessive acceptable not in this country and we look at the government excesses the the total waste of money you know one hundred million dollars for a piece of software like obamacare the obamacare implementation that appears to be useless and we're hardworking you know we we work hard we pay our taxes and many of

us as americans we are barely getting by paying our rent paying our mortgage paying our food supporting our kids to school and we see this excess right in front of us such waste who could be happy seriously what operating system do you use on your computer so i have a lot of computers i use both both apple computers macs i use every every known brand and version of windows. they're all the same to me really i mean nothing is completely secure nothing is completely satisfactory whether you use macro windows there's always something that people are complaining about and that's just the nature of life i'm leaning toward macs these days just because you know i'm getting older and i don't want to continue to learn the the new versions of windows that are coming out so this is my personal preference and both are equal you know richard stallman that we spoke to not long ago calls apple and microsoft

software model where i know that you've so. antivirus like fifteen years ago but it is a pretty in knowing thing like it keeps popping up on my computer all the time. couldn't be used for spying do you think oh is it use for spying. of course any piece of software can be used for spying you have no idea how simple it is for a programmer to put a backdoor into a system a back door as is explained it simply is a way for the programmer or for anybody that has a special code to log on to the software and take control. this happens all the time in fact there are there are applications that you can buy for a multiple of operating systems called keystroke logger years that will watch every keystroke that a user logs and then send that information to any address that you like with that information you can get a person's passwords you can log into them a they're in email read their e-mail you can turn on the camera on their laptop if

the if the case is open and see what's happening in the room and if it's close you can turn on the microphone and listen to what's happening this is trivial people don't understand how widespread this is for example if you use the bank of america application on an android phone you have to click yes to agree to the terms will terms go on for pages and pages nobody reads them i do sometimes if you read the terms it gives the bank of america the right to turn on the camera on your phone any time did it wishes and you've given them global formations so they don't have to notify you well i know why they do it i mean if you empty your bank account and then say it wasn't me someone stole my phone they'll go well look at look at it certainly looks like you but still it's scary if they can do it anybody can do it but we have become lax in our vigilance of what we do we have allowed people like the n.s.a. and bank of america and probably thousands of others to look and hear what we're

doing because we just don't pay attention and i doubt the bank of america story is kind of crazy now i don't claim dot com as your personal here and what is it that inspires you so much about him i would you want to do something with them together . well you know i'm not saying he's my personal hero i'm saying he's merely one of the the leaders in the industry that i admire and you can't deny that he's a leader in the industry he he single digit single handedly got double digit. percentage of the of all the internet traffic i mean that's no mean feat now we have demonized him because his site was used for. you know file sharing of an illegal nature but the telephone is used for illegal purposes all the time and we don't take telephones away from people we we've become very very paranoid in our relation to how what we develop on the internet much of it because of hollywood and

the music industry i don't believe in that i think that kim dotcom did the great thing in the in the software he had developed and of course every every new development is going to be used by crooks and thieves it's just the way the world works well you know out that was going to be actually my second question because i talk about encryption and it can hide you from government's case and that's great but it also creates all sorts of ways to help criminals where race to middle ground . i don't think there is a middle ground i think that that you cannot preemptively restrict your freedoms because of the fear of what something or how something might be used everything that has ever been developed has been used for a bad purpose baseball bats which are fun for you know for baseball players to hit balls you know they've also been used to beat people to death i mean we just cannot restrict ourselves because something might be used in the wrong way and if you look

at what the device is i mean privacy good heavens what what what is worse the price of losing your privacy i can't think of anything. on a different note john i want to talk about the i'm to buy yachting that you've been working on in belize is it distributed in the united states does it have any distribution at all and moreover who does it help that. the that product was abandoned when the police and government stormed my laboratory and destroyed after me in dollars worth of property at that point i abandoned the jungle and went back to san pedro island it was simply too dangerous for me to live in the interior any longer police is a dangerous country and if you if you look at statistics it is the murder capital of the world based on murder rates per capita. and i took

a long look at my situation and realize that if i stayed and continued the research i had a likelihood of meeting a bad end so i abandoned it went back to san pedro and that's one of the one of the things perhaps i do regret doing but i simply could not pursue it further so as to buy it and to buy out and dad is it all over. certainly my part of it is yes and it's tragic because the research was based on a new concept called quorum sensing which is the means that bacteria used to communicate between themselves of the same species and also with other species of bacteria we didn't even know existed until about ten years ago and it opens up massive avenues of hope for all kinds of disease. but you know unfortunately i needed access to the jungle plants along the rivers there in order to get samples of quorum sensing compounds developed by the plants and i can't do

that anymore you know i'm thinking with all of your enterprises to anti-virus to antibiotics and now the dea central are you are you is it like a messiah syndrome because you want to save people you want to save the world are you just a good businessman. i hope i do not have a messiah messiah complex i know it my mantis route is not in saving the world i think that's that's a vainglorious occupation it's simply you don't really know what is right for the world i am curious and my curiosity is what drives me and i got into the computer virus field because when the first concept first came up i read about it the next day in the paper and thought wow that's fascinating and started thinking about it and wrote a program to to combat it that became a business the same thing when i started tribal voice there was no instant messaging and email was was sort of tedious and time consuming so i thought there's

got to be a better way and came up with instant messaging the same thing with all of my my my projects i hear the concept like the concept of of course i'm sensing a wow bacteria communicate with each other how can that be used but not that i'm against helping the humanity i certainly want to help humanity but it's not what drives me it really isn't it's curiosity yeah right really shortly programs coming to an end many would also argue that you're the master of paranoia and you've capitalized on it do you suffer from it though well you know. people call me paranoid when i was running from the police and government but honestly when you're hiding in the jungle and in ditches and people trying to shoot you is that paranoia maybe but at least it's real. i don't consider myself paranoid i consider myself cautious. of people also point to the beginning

of the virus industry where a virus called the michelangelo made great headlines and i was i was talking about it. it was a real virus and it was a real problem. the fact that i came out ahead in that process had nothing to do with paranoia and everything to do with my competitive capacities and my technological competence so i don't know if i am paranoid and you know i i i get along pretty well in spite of it i just don't think i thank you very much for this interview that's. what legendary programmer john mcafee that's all watching and tune in for the next edition of said.

secret. was to believe. anything. to teach me why you should care about. this why you should. only. the. pledge was terrible a little and very hard to take on to let once again let along here there's a lot that you never had sex with others make their lives let's call it was. just say. listen the

i'm living. the. he survived war atrocities. to make a psychologist says she. has changed his life and the world around him. by giving. hope. and love to so many children.

nikolai the american worker on the. show what you're arguing for is that the kurds should put that african identity above that national identity let me ask you a personal question. occurred first or and iraq it first occurred first then i mean rocky i am not iraqi that i am a kurds because let me ask you that question i am from holland i have been bombarded you know i still remember the smell of the chemical weapons so what iraqi identity brought to me iraq and in the brought to me the killings of people mass graves four thousand five hundred villages were destroyed.

motions considering resuming known to be so military age to syria despite a radical al qaida linked to rebels gaining strength that and controlling crucial towns in neighboring iraq. europe's a star it's a facing guys at the top with a blank slate. it is airing some of the lowest approval ratings and death reagan and bailed out country and. also this on i've been told lay's killed by u.s. soldiers after being with stake and for the enemy they says washington's failing to get kabul to sign a security deal. on school safety russia launches a massive security operation i had over the winter games of the largest in a brick history.