John McAfee made a surprise appearance at a hacker conference

John McAfee, the controversial founder of McAfee antivirus software, has started a new company called The Brown List aimed at helping people fight big problems. He made the announcement in a surprise appearance at a hacker conference here today. The list will take complaints filed by ordinary people about an injustice that they perceive, such as repression from a government or callous act of a large corporation. The Brown List will then try to help those citizens get justice.

John McAfee, a pioneer of antivirus software, made a surprise appearance at a hacker conference here to warn that smartphone apps spy on consumers. He also mentioned death threats from people in Belize, smoking marijuana while listening to a Bible recording, the age of consent and the popular computer program that, until recently, bore his name. Such is life through the eyes of McAfee, best known recently for misadventures abroad, including escaping from Belize after his neighbor was found dead. Belize officials called him a person of interest in the 2012 incident. He fled to Guatemala, then faked a heart attack to win deportation to the U.S. “I may ramble a little about funny things,” McAfee said in a hotel ballroom at the Def Con conference, where he said he had come to talk about privacy. “The most interesting thing that happened to me is Intel, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided to drop my name from its products.”