It seems like whenever VPNs are discussed, on HN and elsewhere, a typical refrain is something like "governments can trivially track VPN users, VPNs do nothing". I think I'm probably overstating the claim a little, because I don't remember exactly what it is, and it varies a little from claimant to claimant. But the idea is that you'd have to be naive to think any VPN will protect you from a state actor, because they can either spot you based on when traffic enters and leaves the VPN, or simply because every VPN company provides data to them on request, if not in real time. I can imagine that a determined agency could fairly easily triangulate enough information to identify an individual VPN user's activity, and I can imagine many of them rolling over when threatened. But, this is at least some evidence that VPNs frustrate governments for the very common use case of large numbers of regular people using them to bypass censorship restrictions.