In some countries, connecting to the wider internet can be a crime, a writer contends, describing the purchase and use of a virtual private network as an unlawful act under restrictive national codes. The column frames that legal reality as part of a larger pattern in which governments outlaw mundane acts of information seeking and expression.
Everyday acts labeled criminal
The author describes a personal decision to buy a VPN and cross “digital borders” imposed by the state, an action the piece says would be regarded as illegal where they live. The account emphasizes the routine nature of the behavior: young students accessing educational videos, workers seeking independent news, artists, exiles and older family members using platforms such as YouTube.
"You are reading the words of a criminal. Yes — I am a criminal."
That opening line frames the column’s central argument: when basic acts of learning, communication or entertainment are made unlawful, the legal system risks criminalizing ordinary life. The essay situates that observation within a long intellectual tradition about the shifting boundary between the lawful and the illicit.
Historical and sociological context
The writer draws on Émile Durkheim’s theory that some behaviors deemed criminal in one era become moral advances in another. Two historical figures are used as touchstones: Socrates, condemned in ancient Athens for challenging prevailing morals, and Mansur al-Hallaj, the Persian Sufi mystic who was imprisoned, tortured and executed in Baghdad in 922 after confronting religious and social norms.
Those examples are presented to argue that state definitions of crime can trail or suppress emerging moral perspectives, and that penal labels sometimes fall on individuals whose actions later are reinterpreted as catalysts for change.
- Claim: Ordinary online behavior—using a VPN, viewing content, sharing ideas—can be criminalized under authoritarian rules.
- Framework: The column uses Durkheim’s sociology and historical analogies to suggest that criminal labels are historically contingent.
- Implication: Laws that broadly restrict digital access may have chilling effects on education, journalism, art and private life.
Reference points
The column does not present new legal filings or specific prosecutions; it reads as a first-person reflection and theoretical argument grounded in historical analogy. The examples cited—Socrates and al-Hallaj—are used to illustrate long-standing tensions between law and what later becomes accepted moral practice.
| Name | Role | Noted date/place |
|---|---|---|
| Socrates | Philosopher, condemned in Athens | Ancient Athens |
| Mansur al-Hallaj | Sufi mystic, executed | Baghdad, 922 |
| Émile Durkheim | Sociologist, author | Referenced work: The Rules of Sociological Method |
The piece invites readers and policymakers to consider how criminal law is used to police digital boundaries, and how those boundaries affect ordinary people’s access to information and expression. It frames current digital restrictions as part of a broader, historically recurring pattern in which the law outpaces contemporary moral judgments.
