Today I met a friend and she told me that an european writer was banned from travelling to the States, because he did already criticize in the past and recently (together with a few other writers) launched an online petition against the surveillance of internet activities by NSA and other agencies.

This made me think about why a democratic nation would have an interest to not let a person physically travel to it: naturally because of her/his ideas, thoughts, opinions and to prevent this person from spreading these among the nation's inhabitants to make them think about it too. It's not because of some fear of terrorism, especially in this case where a writer is the target, it'd be because of what he would write or could say of course.

But (besides it's the internet): What if this writer creates an avatar in DDO or any other MMO with servers in the States, where she/he settles down, starts a life, interacts with other people, could chat, talk, discuss, influence decisions, make others think about his thoughts, and so on - in fact nearly really be (not physically but virtually) in the nation he won't be allowed to travel to and do the same things there she/he'd do if she/he would be there physically? What would be the difference? One can say it won't have an impact on the whole nation, because it's just a virtual reality - but even in real life no one could affect the whole nation at the same time, it alwas starts small and then grows. Would this be a possibility to flank a travel ban?