Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesA customer in a Beijing cafe — not yet affected by new regulations requiring bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores in China to install Web monitoring software — surfing the Web. The fourth winner of our contest wrote about privacy on the Internet.This is it: our fourth and final winner in our monthlong New York Times Summer Reading Contest. This week, Shannon Doyne and Amanda Christy Brown helped me judge, and their help and insights were invaluable – it was hard to choose from among the more than 100 thoughtful entries on topics that included healthy food, math camp, e-books and the attacks in Norway.
Geri told us: “I have never read the New York Times before, but this summer my sister gave me homework. She told me that I had to read one New York Times article a day and write an essay on each article.” Her sister had a clear purpose: “She wanted me to learn more about the world and she wanted me to become a better thinker and a better writer.” Geri concluded, “I protested and I didn’t like that my sister gave me summer homework but I’m (secretly) glad that she did because I’m learning new things and am thinking about new things.”
We’re glad she did too, Geri. And we’re grateful to the teachers, librarians, parents and others who encouraged students to participate in our contest this summer.
And now, without further ado …
First, our three runners-up, in order of submission:
Gyu-Hyeun, of South Korea, a global citizen who shared concern for those affected by the famine in Somalia.PavlaJCS, who tried to process the killings in Norway.Calvin, who put his family’s experiences into the larger context of the real estate market.The winner is MunawarR-BSGE2016, who caught our attention in previous weeks, writing about meteorologists and the case of Aisha Bibi. This week, he tied in a reference to a classic novel with a comment about Internet freedom in China:
Ever since reading 1984 by George Orwell I’ve grown paranoid of the possibility of a hellish future manipulated by a dictatorship eyeing our every move. The reason this article caught my eye was because of the eerie similarities between China’s new web-monitoring regulations and the totalitarianism described in my favorite book. It seems the more I see, hear and read of these government-related acts in the media the more my nightmare becomes reality.
China has already limited citizens’ Internet usage by banning services such as YouTube and Facebook- which teenagers like me absolutely cannot live without. By also monitoring who visits which websites, the idea of internet anonymity is null. When I’m on the Internet chatting or sharing, I have the advantage of no one knowing my name or location and not harming me. To have my privacy taken away from me — especially by the government — is disturbing, and halting my computer usage seems better than anyone becoming suspicious of me.
Although I disagree with them, I believe the true motivation for these regulations are the recent attacks in Norway and not a simple imposition of power. I would like to believe that if the Internet activity of mastermind Anders Behring Breivik had been monitored, the attacks in Oslo and Utoya wouldn’t have occurred. Breivik had clearly announced his beliefs and intentions on Internet forums and YouTube- if the authorities had been following him, seventy-six more people would still be living today. Despite being unconventional and controversial, such kind of surveillance in Norway could have saved lives.
In fiction and reality, it always seems that government is power-hungry and evil. However, I don’t think the Chinese government should be called evil in this situation; they’ve stated their intentions to catch business-stealing criminals and terrorists like Breivik through this software. However, bookstores and Internet cafes are already losing business as they shut down their Wi-Fi protesting the regulations, willing to lose a profit in favor of their customers’ freedom — a modern civil rights boycott. Although I agree with them, I feel that some form of surveillance should exist- one that tracks specific websites and people instead of monitoring innocents. Some countries already monitor suspicious Internet activity, but they need to step it up a bit. I don’t want totalitarianism in my society, but if a guy threatens to bomb a building in an Internet forum I think it should be taken seriously.
If you know anyone who thinks “kids today” know nothing and care less about news and the world, we hope you will show them the entries, especially the winning submissions, in our New York Times Summer Reading Contest.
Students: Thank you for the intelligent and moving entries you submitted. We’re glad you participated in our contest, and you can read the submissions of all four winners here.
Starting Aug. 8, we’ll bring our popular Student Opinion feature back from summer vacation, and we hope you will join the continuing conversation there.
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