Apparently one of the upsides of an idea this absurd and obvious is that when you get caught you can use "Are you serious? Who would use an obviously fake rock to spy on people?" as a defense.
$10,000,000.00 For something you could make with a Raspberry Pi, mic, webcam, wifi adapter?
"RockCam included a 900MHz Spread Spectrum Frequency Hopping
Microhard Spectra 910 radio..."
This is ostensibly to avoid detection, but with the proliferation of wifi all over the place, one station named "Linksys" or even one without broadcasting SSID will go unnoticed for a long time.
"The custom mainboard we developed would enter in a deep sleep mode to
conserve energy, and would be woken up whenever the PIR sensor was
triggered to capture high resolution pictures that were then transmitted
via spread spectrum radio link to a central concentrator that was
Internet-connected."
So, it's using the same technology as those "advanced" hunting cameras you can buy on Amazon. Shouldn't be too hard to do something similar.
"RockCam included deep cycle batteries which provided at least three (3)
years of operation without recharging in the field"
A solar panel + battery pack would accomplish the same. Or if there's a lamp post nearby, you can tap into the power feed by running a small wire underground.
The biggest expense seems to be specialized hardware that provided encryption, custom data uplinks and secure RockCam-to-RockCam communication etc...
Edit: Further reading, the price isn't for hardware, but for software and other "data"? Er... If that isn't inviting a visit from MIB, I don't know what is.
As he says in the article, it's not the hardware that the price is there for, but rather the backups of years of his company's files, including conversation with Lockheed, etc.
Whether it's actually worth that is another matter entirely.
For $10M, I'll build you a custom fake rock with a camera and wifi using "modern" technologies. I'll even throw in a touch screen and cellular connections. (Aka, a cellphone sitting inside a fake rock)
That jumped out at me as well. He states that he believes he is within his rights and that may even be the case but as it is presented it does not actually look like it and this could come back to bite him, hard.
If genuine this amounts to purchasing stolen goods, buyer beware. Not that at $10M I think there'll be any takers.
As always there is likely another side to this story and if you're a US buyer of this batch of stuff you're probably going to be dealing with that aspect of the sale.
The way I read this is: founder got screwed, founder uses ebay to put the pressure on his former employer to see if he can get compensation by threatening to expose the crown jewels of the company which he developed.
On another level, this story is just like any other minority shareholder dispute and founders should definitely take a warning from this.
It is relatively easy to screw a minority shareholder, even a founder, if everybody else colludes. This can happen and it does happen, hell, it happened to me. If you're technically savvy but not business savvy you might as well settle for a fat salary in many cases, unless there is ample paperwork to document your position and sufficient trust between you and your partners.
I wouldn't touch this auction with a 10' pole, but there might be someone out there that takes the bait and thinks that this is peanuts for the goods from a counter-intelligence perspective.
To create a competing product based on this data would be a very stupid move and at that price I think you could do a lot better by doing it again with today's tech.
Essentially he is saying: my 10% of the company is worth 10 million dollars (or more) and that alone might be an indication of the kind of thing that lies at the heart of the conflict.
I hope the poster finds a way to fund his lawsuit in a less controversial way, if only because he's selling some of the evidence that he'll need in order to win it and because he's opening himself up to a substantial counter-claim and actively helps the opposition with an own goal.
If the poster of the ebay auction reads this: retract this auction, get a lawyer, if possible on a contingency basis but at least for a few hours (which you should be able to afford out of pocket) to research the legality of your position. If a lawyer will sign off on this action in writing then go for it. But I doubt that will happen. Hint: a minor shareholder does not have the right to pre-emptively strike at the company based on the outcome of a lawsuit that still has to be fought. It is very well possible that when the dust settles that you'll own the assets of the company but until then this stuff is company property and you as a shareholder are acting against the interests of that company and probably against the terms of your employment contract. That's a (very) bad spot to be in and it may very well annul any and all rights that you still have or cause the tide to turn against you from having the moral high-ground to becoming the defendant.
>I was told by the other execs that the product had not been picked up by Lockheed, and therefore that the company had been wound down and dissolved.
and then
>Included on this CD... a list of all the nuclear power plants and numbers of installed RockCams at each nuclear power plant location...
So... which is it? If the company was spun down and dissolved, then I imagine there wasn't any further activity that could end up in mail spools or shared drives or whatnot that he had access to. There wouldn't be a list of nuclear sites where this technology was deployed, because Lockheed never picked it up. Of course, he implies that the Russian "spy rock" incident was this technology --a plausible assumption, at least-- and that this implies the technology is still in the field. But he wouldn't be privy to where in the field the tech was deployed after the company was spun down. Were these devices deployed into the field (the Nuclear Reactor locations) during R&D or alpha/beta testing when the company was still active? If so, how does he know the devices would still be there?
The financial and other business data could be very useful in journalistic endeavours. ProjectPM would eat it up. Just imagine all of the social networks you could graph out (it is just metadata; I'm sure they won't mind). However, I don't think the auctioneer is aiming this at journalists. I don't know of any journalists that have a spare 10 million laying around or otherwise have access to 10 million. If not journalists, then perhaps competitors in the field. Given the way he's worded this missive, the tone gives off an air that he'd be willing to sell to anyone. But surely this fella can't think that ebay is going to just let this auction continue? He seems to imply that he wants others to message him. No contact info is given. His ebay user isn't going to be around for long.
He gave his name though, and from that I found that this person was apparently on cryptome a month ago --listing his email as Gregory.Perry@GoVirtual.tv; no public keys on pgp.mit.edu-- where he was "planning" all this out (poorly, if I might add):
>I don't think there should be any national security concerns with the release of any of this information.... However, I have no knowledge of any such derivative projects manufactured by Lockheed, Boeing, or otherwise, so I don't think there should be any national security concerns with auctioning off this hardware and related engineering blueprints to the highest bidder on Ebay.
And who he's aiming the auction at:
>I am also in possession of a year or so worth of electronic mail correspondence and communications by and between AWA, Lockheed, M2M, and various components such as DTRA that may be of use to other burgeoning startups interested in building covert imager hardware, so all of those documents, the prototype hardware that I have here, and some pretty pictures will be listed on Ebay today or tomorrow for NATO-friendly nation states to peruse and bid on.
Honestly, this all feels very hamfisted at best. I don't think this person really thought this through.
I cannot help but notice a few commercial hardware projects involved who have made it clear they do not like their hardware/software being used in things like military applications.
While I haven't heard Xbee's stance on such things, would they perhaps care to clarify their stance beyond "most persons are able to use our products, the use is up to the end consumer."
I would wholly appreciate it since hobbyist part manufactures depend on the community around them, and we really do like some of the makers out there as well as their efforts for disseminating open ended hardware for others to tinker with.
edit: Thank you diydrones community and others! Promoting responsible use while not seeking to limit the possible innovations of others.
Apparently one of the upsides of an idea this absurd and obvious is that when you get caught you can use "Are you serious? Who would use an obviously fake rock to spy on people?" as a defense.