re: McAfee "suicide" gets weirder *trigger warning*...

A dead-man’s switch is a control meant to trigger in the event that someone does not check in periodically. This dates back to fail-safes installed in factories in the industrial Revolution. If someone didn’t periodically pull the switch to show that they were monitoring the activity, the machine would automatically shut down.

There’s a similar mechanism on most riding lawnmowers. If you take your weight off the seat, it automatically kills the engine to prevent accidents.

In IT terms, such as this, a “dead man’s switch” is a cache of data or a password to unlock a cache of data that will be released in the event that an individual fails to login periodically. This is often set up as an insurance policy of sorts.

Much like Julien Assange, McAfee claimed he had a dead man’s switch which would result in a massive release of incredibly damaging information implicating criminal actions by dozens of government figures and business tycoons should he reach an untimely end. It was meanas a threat to keep powerful people from murdering him. Now that he’s dead from a “suicide” (he repeatedly emphasized that he would never ever commit suicide, that he was not the least bit suicidal, and that any apparent suicide would absolutely be staged to cover for his murder), people are speculating as to whether or not a dead man’s switch has been activated, what kind of information it could contain, and what the implications could be.