A break-in, by definition, is criminal regardless of the motivation. This would be like breaking into city hall to stage a protest -- the protest part is democratic, the break-in part is criminal.
When the folks making the laws are criminals, breaking the law is still criminal. By definition.
Whether it's right or wrong is a different and more nuanced question; but it's not the question addressed by the parent. I sympathise with your perspective, but I dislike "debate drift."
In that case, using the word 'criminal' as if it's at all relevant to the situation is 'debate drift'. It's a loaded word and its use as a label carries well known connotations. I'm not disputing the tautological definition, I'm disputing the implicatons of invoking it.
Put another way, you don't often hear Gandhi or Martin Luther King referred to as 'criminals', even if by definition it's the truth. There's a reason for that, and there's a reason why I'd tend to be pretty skeptical of someone who chose such a label for those men in conversation, technically factual though it may be.
That's not the way I read the original use of "criminal," but that's a legitimate argument to make. The thing to do would have been to say something like "I agree with you denotatively, but disagree with your connotations," and explain why. Not to fight debate drift with more debate drift.
>When the folks making the laws are criminals, breaking the law is still criminal. By definition.
some other definition:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "
On the contrary, "by definition" has a very clear meaning in mathematics and logic. On HN and other forums with logically-slanted people, it's used to reduce ambiguity in drifting debates like this one.
This gets to be a complicated question. Basically, if you believe that your government is corrupt and no longer represents you, you may have the right or even a responsibility to revolt [1]. This gets fuzzy with right and wrong. You see if you pull off a revolution, you get to set the rules. You may even be able to call the losers criminals and try them as such. In some cases you could even make up laws and try the prior government members for them retroactively and get away with it if enough people think that what you are doing is right and just. However, until you win, the current government will consider you a criminal.
General McArthur, after the fire bombing of Tokyo and other large cities in Japan said that if the US doesn't win the war, he will be a war criminal. the definers tend to be the winners at least initially. From the longer term historical perspective, not so much, for example, Japanese internment during WW2.
The Syrian government has already said the protests are illegal. So if we follow pure logic, they are all criminals and should be locked up. This comes back to a fundamental question of democracy, who owns the government?
