One of the Tor developers draws the distinction between "privacy by design" and "privacy by policy". Tor gives you privacy by design. It's difficult for someone to know who you are and what you are doing, because of the design of the network. VPN provides offer privacy by policy. They "promise" not to log what you are doing. You have no way to verify their claim, they could change their minds, or they could be compelled by their authorities to start logging. What you seem to be promoting is privacy by red tape. Julian Assange is not confident in the Swedish government's ability to resist the US government's demands, so I don't know if I would base my safety on that.