By: Vincent Justin Mitra, Peak Associate
The Father’s Day blackout — which occurred at 4:30 p.m. and affected the electrical systems and phone lines across Burnaby Mountain — has been determined to have been caused by the installation of a campus-wide crime prediction software, reports say.
Details are scarce, but one witness reports seeing large server racks being wheeled into the Bennett Library after regular hours. The witness, who asked to remain anonymous, guessed that the final destination of the servers was likely the little-known boiler room located beneath the Burnaby library. The boiler room, off-limits to the general public and staffed at all times by at least a single guard, supplies water to both the student dormitories on the west side of campus as well as all the buildings on the east side of campus, using an intricate series of tubes.
The rumoured SFU crime prediction software is reportedly the result of a recent joint project between the computer science, criminology, and artificial intelligence departments of SFU and headed by Michael Ostrich, professor of theoretical computing.
When asked about the blackout, Ostrich replied “That was me, yes. You’re welcome.”
The now-confirmed SFU Crime Prediction Software is described by Ostrich as a response to rising levels of crime around key areas of campus. “You are being watched,” Ostrich said simply. “The administration has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day that you are on campus.”
According to Ostrich, the system is able to predict crimes seconds before they happen by cross-referencing each student’s social insurance number, bank balance, credit score, GPA, Twitter popularity, work history, and race. “Mostly race,” emphasized Ostrich. “It’s super racist. We probably shouldn’t have let it on Twitter.”
Crimes predicted by the software include overdue library books, fishing for koi at the AQ reflection pond, parking in president Petter’s reserved parking spot, late tuition payments, and cutting in line at the bus loops. “Literally only those,” added Ostrich.
When asked about the history of the project and how he achieved his position, Ostrich was surprisingly forthcoming. “I’m very highly educated,” he said. “They came to me and asked if I had a degree in theoretical computing and I said I had a theoretical degree in computing and, boom, end of unemployment. When they wanted me to build the machine, I realized that computers are much more powerful when they have more monitors. Currently we’re at five monitors and three whole keyboards.”
The system itself is described as having “four whole Ks” of memory and 17 “sticks” of ram in “a pile in the corner.” When asked how the system was programmed, Ostrich explained that “all [he] needed to do was create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track the perpetrator’s IP address. Afterwards it was just a matter of shouting enhance loud enough at [his] five monitors.”
When the interview concluded, Ostrich swallowed several red pills, donned a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses, and proceeded to slowly ‘limbo’ his way out the door.
The system is predicted to be operational on all three campuses no later than November 15.
