McAfee’s location was exposed after he agreed to let two reporters from Vice Magazine tag along with him. Proud to finally be in the thick of a story rife with vices — drugs, murder, prostitutes, guns, vicious dogs, a fugitive millionaire and his inappropriately young girlfriend — they proudly posted an iPhone photo to their blog of Vice editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro standing with the source of the mayhem in front of a jungly background, saying, “We are with John McAfee right now, suckers.”
With that posting, they went from chroniclers of vices to inadvertent narcs. They left the metadata in the photo, revealing McAfee’s exact location, down to latitude and longitude. McAfee tried to claim he’d manipulated the data — a claim that Vice photographer backed up on Facebook in a posting he’s since deleted — but then capitulated, hired a lawyer, and tried to claim asylum in Guatemala. Guatemalan authorities instead detained McAfee for entering the country illegally. All of which was dutifully reported by the Vice reporters, with no mention of their screw-up.
I doubt anything will come of this beyond some egg on Vice’s face, but even that is a pleasant image to consider. Vice has a sneering, smug cynicism about it. The printed equivalent of that guy you never want to be alone with. Here’s hoping future interviewees think twice about this tarnished reputation and the rag diminishes in value.