" "Do I approve of private citizens and organizations taking actions such as these if they believe they're helping fight crime?""

Crime? If every fringe nutcase gets to decide what is crime, and act on that, then it's likely you've committed somebody's idea of a crime, and so has everyone else.

So far the accusations of Stratfor's evil have been about as meaningful as the British people who threatened a pediatrician, ignorantly thinking she was a pedophile.

I don't see anyone railing against the crimes of Jane's, or the Economist Intelligence Unit. Probably because they know nothing whatsoever about the industry and don't even know those organizations exist.