I think the “attack” in point 1 wasn’t an attack, and that the questions about representation were not merely justifiable, they’re completely reasonable. It makes sense to ask if this is the opinion of a single researcher, or if the department and employer share the opinions. I imagine it changes their legal stance if they’re proven to be innocent of the claims against them (i.e. they’d sue the university for reputational damage stemming from improperly conducted research/improper notification processes).

However, I think excerpt 1 paints a different in light of excerpt 2, and especially excerpt 3. 3 feels a lot like DARVO with their rumination on being a hapless victim of some conspiracy. It comes across as, “We can’t disprove the claims against us, even in the private documents we’ve sent to Mozilla, so we’re going to claim they’re being unfair and abusive, and they don’t understand corporate structures.” They’re suggesting that the people responding from Mozilla and Google don’t understand corporate culture, or that they’re too incompetent to use the vast resources at their disposal to verify their beliefs about Trustcor’s corporate structure. This is a big deal, sure the people responding from Mozilla and Google could have business documents reviewed by a legal expert at their respective companies, assuming they don’t have direct knowledge.

"It makes sense to ask if this is the opinion of a single researcher, or if the department and employer share the opinions."

1. No it doesn't make sense. He said:

"I'm Joel Reardon, a professor at the University of Calgary, who researches privacy in the mobile space." and not

"I'm Joel Reardon a security researcher" - so it's clear it's his professional opinion as a professor not a private opinion / or commercial opinion.

2. No university shares the opinions of it's professors, that's kind of the key of an university.