> Gommers contacted Skype, another of his firm's clients, and asked them for the suspect's account data.

This seems to be an ongoing theme: personal relationships causing people to do unethical things. It's particularly true in journalism. You want to help your friend, right? You don't want to make them mad.

Standards (like Skype's alleged "policy") need to be better, and much more strictly enforced.

If this were the case I would argue that the bigger problem is the apparently very easy accessibility of client data to employees.

Yes! Training people to not be human is much harder than just maximizing accountability and minimizing opportunity for people to do the wrong thing.

Way to go iSIGHT! That's what we always dreamed the "infosec" industry would be! A bunch of for-hire goons willing to do the dirty work for private companies. Fun fun fun!

"The company says it is reviewing how personal information came into the hands of a private firm."

I thought that was pretty clear from the article - they asked.

If I were to guess, Skype is probably the most privacy breaching communication tool there is right now. They are giving the information way too easily to pretty much any type or level of law enforcement right now, from police to national security agencies and anyone in between, and it's not just US either.

Wait so is this a "guess" or fact?

It's a well-informed classificaton, and he openly called is his "guess". Declaring something "the most privacy breaching software" is inherently subjective and arbitrary, so I don't think anyone here is stupid enough to think that's being passed off as fact. This is obviously just his opinion and you're entitled to disagree, but we've all seen Skype in similar headlines before - do you have a more interesting counterargument?