Unveiling
The design was presented in 2002 in Beijing at the China Police exhibition. Boeskov created an artistic project, "My Doomsday Weapon", a travelling exhibition of the ID Sniper rifle, in which he humorously describes his "infiltration" of China police. Boeskov says that a Chinese company offered venture capital and a location for manufacturing.
The news about the weapon was spread over the internet. When the news was "slashdotted", the Empire North website was hit with about 1.6 million viewers. Even Computerworld was hoaxed although they quickly withdrew the report. In the spring of 2004 the news and work of the company reached Washington, DC, in the Homeland Security newsletter published by the Congressional Quarterly Group.
Engadget published a brief comment about the hoax, together with a picture of the "weapon" shortly after the Computerworld article was released. Nevertheless on March 7th, 2007, Engadget posted further images and news of the "weapon" under the title "ID Sniper Rifle fires GPS tracking chip into unwitting humans" despite having denounced it as a hoax three years before.
Read more about this topic: ID Sniper Rifle