> Honest question: Is there any reason to believe that PIA is a US intel operation vs, say a Russian one?
I would also like to know the motivation for a US intel agency to want to run a VPN. It seems to me like it wouldn't be worth the bother: VPNs aren't illegal in the US, so it would be too hard to convince everyone to use theirs. Spies, etc. could just use private ones they control. They'd just see a bunch of crap from unsophisticated people.
Seems to me like it would be more likely for US law enforcement to want to do something like that, but I'm skeptical they have the resources.
> ProtonVPN (operated from Switzerland) claims[1]: "Our security team has also identified at least one VPN service which is working on behalf of a state surveillance agency."
> If I had to guess, it would be PIA: the most popular, the most accessible, and the most affordable US-based VPN.
If I had to guess, the state surveillance agency-run VPN would be one that's still accessible from China. I understand (but I could be wrong) there are still a few that manage to evade the blocks and provide good service despite all the crackdowns. Chinese state security has many more reasons to want to watch domestic VPN traffic than the US does. Their motivation is proven by the fact that they've spent the effort to build and maintain the "Great Firewall," and crack down on VPNs that bypass it.
It would be reasonably clever for the Chinese to crack down on all the VPNs that they don't control, funneling all the "illicit" traffic to the few VPNs they do control. It would make spying, monitoring dissidents, etc. much easier for them.
The NSA and other US intelligence agencies probably don't care very much about anyone that's dumb enough to need to use public VPN. Seems like the only people who would care in the US are domestic law enforcement, like the FBI.
Where do you plan to announce when you're ready to name names? I may have some need in the future to use a VPN in China and would like to be aware.
Also props on your mail service, it's very impressive. If it had been released a bit earlier, I think I'd have been a customer.