Next in line at the great journalistic jungle buffet is Vice, which sent down two dudes to chat with paranoid/fugitive John McAfee and reprint his various insane thoughts. And more: they forgot to clear GPS data in an uploaded photo.


The data, gleaned from an iPhone snap of McAfee smiling and smoking a cigarette next to another, dour guy, would plant the group in Guatemala, not Belize, where he'd been holed up for weeks now after murder suspicions turned him into a tropical recluse. It would appear he's flown the coop, unless the GPS data was intentionally changed in order to throw us all off. Which, you know, who knows, at this point.


But if the GPS coordinates are a screwup—which is certainly possible—police shouldn't have any trouble finding the antivirus/bath salt-enthusiast. The slipup will probably destroy whatever elaborate escape John had northward, towards freedom. We've got longitude and latitude on this guy now. He's next to the Rio Dulce, perhaps at the nearby Restaurante Ranchon Mary, which has one review on Google Maps: "Exelente comida, una vista espectacular y muy buen servicio." He's also near an airport, so, hurry up cops and/or bounty hunters.

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iOS hacker Marc Powell has what looks like proof of the accidental coordinates.

[Noticed by Simple Nomad]

Update: "John McAfee" just "blogged" from "his blog" that he deliberately manipulated the GPS data in the photo to protect his location, which is exactly what I'd write on the Internet if I accidentally leaked my secret location.


Update 2: As Betabeat points out, McAfee's "apology" to Vice contradicts one issued by Vice's photographer, Robert King, issued around the same time, apologizing on behalf of McAfee. If that doesn't seem to make sense, it's because it doesn't. More reason to believe they just blew it.

Update 3: McAfee just fully admitted that Vice blew his cover.