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Former Lockheed Skunkworks Engineer Auctioning a Prototype "Spy Rock"
ilikenwf writes "For a cool $10,000,000.00, the prototype of a surveillance rock full of spy gadgets could be yours! More importantly, server backups from the gentleman's time at Lockheed are included, being the real valuable in this auction, as it contains schematics and such. The seller seems to think that the current xBee radio products are actually based on his work with Lockheed. The proceeds will go towards legal action the seller is apparently taking against his former employer." This may be the most unusual eBay product description I've ever encountered, and one of the most interesting, too.
even though this guy designed the hardware, wouldn't the documents and hardware be considered Intellectual Property of Lockheed?
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Does the rock also keep tigers away? Because if so, SOLD!
I.. what? What, is Slashdot the new weekly world news?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Seriously, how hard is it to spell the company name correctly?
Something tells me that version 2.0 of these skunk-work projects will show up at your doorstep if you show serious interest in this offer.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
you have no idea how badly I wanted to hit buy it now...just 'cuz....must not hit the shiny red button....must not....
Because a Rasberry Pi, slightly outdated cellphone, wireless router, digital TV tuner card or USB device, flash memory, styrofoam, and spraypaint aren't exactly that expensive as OTS component resources in regards to being able to roll your own. Outside of custom software and knowing how to put the hardware together, it should be possible for under $1000 easy.
I'm surprised there are no NSA jokes or references posted yet.
I wonder if 'free shipping' also includes trans-Atlantic shipping? To eh.. say Russia, for example?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
It is a pity that the poster has never actually read the description of the auction, otherwise they would have found that:
"The pictures depicted from this auction show some of the early prototypes from the project; however, it should be noted that none of that hardware will be included in this auction as I had a non-intentionally set fire :) that transpired at my house in the storage area where my prototypes were, that destroyed most if not all of the prototype hardware from the initial project development with Lockheed. Those pictures were taken during the development process at one of Lockheed's SCIFs located in Northern Virgina, as is evidenced by the yellow caution tape you see on the floor there in the first few pictures. The last picture was one of the sample images generated from a RockCam installed across the street from one of the engineer's house."
and
" 1) Microhard Spectra 910 900MHz serial line radio with power supply (this was a prototype 900MHz radio that I believe went on to become the current generation of ZigBee-based XBee radios; 2) A collection of PC104-based enclosures and motherboards, with various interfacing such as serial ports, USB ports, etc; 3) A Mobile Wireless Technologies RM1000g AVS vehicle transponder with WWAN and GPS tracking support; 4) Novate wireless prototyping board; 5) GNU X-Tools cross compilation software; and 6) A CD filled with backup materials during several years of the company (the most valuable part of this auction obviously)"
So still some nice hw and docs, but certainly no "spy rocks" included. RTFA, guys!
SkunkWorks? Don't they design aircraft? What in the world would an advanced airframe design company want with a rock with a camera in it? And for sure they wouldn't have to hire a sub to design it if they did...
Karma: Bad
So this guy claims that he was co-founder/shareholder/engineer at a company that developed a product for Lockheed and then (probably after showing the (almost final) product to Lockheed) got turned down towards the end of development, leaving the company in bankruptcy. Now he wants to auction this stuff he stole from the company that partially belonged to him, but the liquidator never came up with the idea of selling it. Additionally, he seems to be thinking that Lockheed has indeed taken what he has developed, but never paid for it (which is a very vague claim).
Well, that's probably not going to work as those who held the other 90% of the company shares will want their share of the profits. Additionally, I would be surprised if they did not sign a confidentiality agreement before getting this project.
A bridge perhaps?
It's spelled Lockheed
This started the war in iRock
Table-ized A.I.
The secret sauce to the RockCam was a heavily encrypted link layer and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that I developed, in addition to a wavelet compression pump that was ported to the DSP and which sported a 120:1 compression ratio for imagery data with a better signal-to-noise ratio than other competing image compression standards such as PNG or JPEG2K.
Summary of what's included:
1) Microhard Spectra 910 900MHz serial line radio with power supply (this was a prototype 900MHz radio that I believe went on to become the current generation of ZigBee-based XBee radios;
...
2) A collection of PC104-based enclosures and motherboards, with various interfacing such as serial ports, USB ports, etc;
3) A Mobile Wireless Technologies RM1000g AVS vehicle transponder with WWAN and GPS tracking support;
4) Novate wireless prototyping board;
5) GNU X-Tools cross compilation software;
6) A CD filled with backup materials during several years of the company (the most valuable part of this auction obviously).
Included on this CD are hundreds of documents related to the development of the RockCam including the RockCam Bill of Materials, PROTEL schematics and layout, the Gerber files used to create the custom mainboard including NC drillout files, Pick and Place output files etc, the wavelet executable used for the compression pump, all of the custom CMOS imager mechanical designs for the C-mount pinhole imager, a list of all the nuclear power plants and numbers of installed RockCams at each nuclear power plant location, all of the AWA business plan documentation as well as financial model information, lots of various financial data related to AWA and their investors as well as customers, everything related to the entire product development lifecycle including almost two years of email backups between AWA execs and Lockheed, documents describing the RockCam communication protocol specification with the M2M NOC, emails between the execs and Lockheed officials, pretty much everything you need to replicate this project and build a competing surveillance platform.
This may trigger a fad called something like "pet rocks".
Table-ized A.I.
Did he already sell the Dogpoop Cam? I hear it was cancelled because they got tired of wiping prototypes off their shoes.
Table-ized A.I.
See "Estimated annual revenue" -- $20K
I guess $10M for this shiny rock would bolster the annual revenue a tad...
Karma: Bad
I suspect this is the starting material for a rock cam, I.E. a rock. Good luck with selling that.
For a cool $10,000,000.00, the prototype surveillance rock full of spy gadgets box could be yours! More importantly, home server backups from the gentleman's time at Lockheed are included, which was real valuable to this auction as that's where schematics and such are. The seller seemed to think that the current xBee radio box is actually based on his square design done at Lockeed. Proceeds go towards legal action; The seller is allegedly taking against his former employer's wishes....
And you can keep your weed in there, man!
an old 3g phone with android and no apps, but one app for spying is enough.
There, $50 of hardware needed, nothing else.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The seller must need that $10M for his therapy and/or medication bills. This guy needs to let go of his delusions.
Sure, he could've been a bleeding-edge developer with a hot secret project in his hands, but it's quite insane to believe that his pet project would have direct influence in dozens of others. Ideas are actually quite common and logical, and the hard part usually is pulling it together and then selling it.
CMOS-sensors and wireless links are not that secret anyway. Using DSP for motion-detection on CMOS camera, not really original. And I highly doubt a lossy wavelet-compression would have better signal-to-noise ratio than lossless PNG compression.. Also, all claims about the radiolinks; he used a ready-made radiomodule. If I buy a cellphone, it doesn't make me the owner of all ideas related to communication over the cellphone network. Xbee modules are just simple boards with various radiochips on common connectors. World is also full of MAC layers for radios. Heck, DoD even publishes it's own. Temperature and humidity sensing are also a $2 off-the-shelf feature.
Regards to spying, the device being sold doesn't actually seem to be very good at spying. Ability to transmit images over low-capacity mesh radio links is painful. It doesn't even pick up audio from nearby. No mention of sniffing/monitoring WLAN. It only seems to be an over-engineered motion detector. I'm not surprised to why they axed the project..
In a biography of Ben Rich, the second head of the Skunkworks, the Skunkworks was focused on aircraft design. Lockheed used to be just an airplane company. The X-33 wasn't exactly a success, and Lockheed should have been smarter to abstain from such an aggressive project. Maybe this once great American institution has succumbed to bureaucracy and mediocrity.
From TFA:
"a list of all the nuclear power plants and numbers of installed RockCams at each nuclear power plant location, all of the AWA business plan documentation as well as financial model information, lots of various financial data related to AWA and their investors as well as customers, everything related to the entire product development lifecycle including almost two years of email backups between AWA execs and Lockheed, documents describing the RockCam communication protocol specification with the M2M NOC, emails between the execs and Lockheed officials, pretty much everything you need to replicate this project and build a competing surveillance platform."
Silly question (IANAL), but is this guy responsible for whatever the buyer does with his information? This sounds like confidential stuff, and I find it hard to believe that he can just let it go like that. What happens if some Bad People (TM) use his magic DVD of internal information to compromise Lockheed or M2M? What happens if there was a flaw in his system, and that information gets you into a surveillance system apparently still in use at several nuclear power plants?
This all seems too bizarre to be real. He says he's putting the money towards lawyers for whatever other reason, but what I don't get is that it seems like releasing this information would bring down an insane torrent of other lawsuits, the likes of which I'm guessing his $10M would barely begin to cover.
Will be interesting to see if there is really someone who buys before the auction ends. In effect, he/she will fund the legal campaign of his/her opponent ...
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
I am auctioning this off for the stated price to fund a legal team in DC dig into my dismissal from the company and to determine where the AWA intellectual property went after the demise of AWA.
And what is the interesting part of the auction? A backup CD full of AWA intellectual property. If someone sues him over selling that CD and infringing upon their IP, then he knows who currently owns the IP, and he can in discovery find out how they obtained it—providing the evidence needed to file his own lawsuit.
It sounds like a bit of a gamble, though: What if, say, the customer lists and the patents went to different places? Then the owners of the former could sue him, but he would not get the information he's looking for.
After the Landers Earthquake, 1992, 7.3, seismologists were taken on a guided tour of faults and ground ruptures within the Twentynine Palms. It had taken some time to get permission due to this being a live-fire training region. One seismologist said they were instructed to not to anything, anything without express permission. They were told to not even pick up a rock, and these were geologists and seismologists, because that 'rock' might explode.
Heck with spy rocks. I want exploding rocks!
Sounds like it's higher than the value of the goods to me... if he wants outsiders to fund his legal action, he needs to offer a share of the spoils...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The NSA should buy this ASAP before some terrorist gets it.
I'm thinking this guy is setting himself up for 50 years behind bars, or getting "disappeared", for pursuing this.
Signature intentionally left blank.
10 minutes ago, a hover-over of the main picture yielded "583 people are viewing this per hour". 10 minutes later just now, it's up to 592.
As more people wake up this number should go up.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This sounds like a pretty good idea to collect information about anyone seriously wanting this type of information. It's clever enough. Hey, let's post on ebay some secrets for sale, see who is interested. Make up a story about a burned contractor with seemingly legit claim on the data. IANAL, but I can imagine all kinds of laws people can be charged with for knowingly purchasing and receiving CDs with those emails and schematics, fully expecting they contain anywhere from corporate secrets and up.
This just seems to be a bigger and fancier version of the seismic sensors that looked like dog droppings and were used during the Vietnam war.
Is this the same one that the Russians claimed was used on them last year ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9022827/Russian-spy-rock-was-genuine-former-chief-of-staff-admits.html
If this guy's minimum price is ten million dollars, won't he be on the hook for several hundred thousand in fees to ebay if it doesn't sell?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
MI6 tried that and it was discovered back in 2006
Nobody born and bred in the U.S of A. ends their correspondence with cheers.
Just sayin'
Cheers!
Don't expect this to stay up long. He will getting an offer that he can't refuse before the auction ends. It is pretty certain that he knew that this would happen when he posted it.
More importantly, server backups from the gentleman's time at Lockheed are included, being the real valuable in this auction
I have a hard time imagining, that Lockheed has consented to release of server backups containing intellectual property they made or have an interest in.
Nobody born and bred in the U.S of A. ends their correspondence with cheers.
Lots of us do - and have for decades.
I've used it in email practically since there's been email - and I was born and raised almost in the center of the "radio accent" heartland.
It's short and often just the right tone for ending a written communication.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Several companies and government agencies have developed disguised sensors over the last 20 years. Not sure whats unique, or why the seller thinks his ideas and those of his company were stolen.