And we don't know who or what gave HIVE (witnesses?) the authority to freeze user's STEEM at 22.2

Yes we do. Justin Sun did. It was in the terms of service of the Steemit website he owns.

Justin agreed that his transactions may not be completed as he did not own the Steem blockchain.

The witnesses clearly announced a temporary freeze of his transactions due to the facts that

1. He had purchased a potentially disruptive amount of stake in a back room deal, not via the markets which would have benefitted other Steem holders and precluded him from acquiring such a massive stake due to the run up in price it would have caused.
2. Justin had recently exercised control of founders tokens on the Tron blockchain to manipulate block producer governance.
3. Justin had announced a migration of Steem to the Tron blockchain, even beginning to put a token exchange process in place through Poloniex.
4. During all this had never spoken with Steem elected witnesses.

Justin reacted rather amicably to the freeze, apologizing to the community and scheduling a meeting with the top 50 Steem witnesses to clarify his plans and build the new working relationship.

Of course, that was manipulative stalling as he colluded with exchanges to utilize customer deposits to overthrow rightful Steem governance and install 20 fake sock puppet witnesses, bringing us to our present state.

So, as you can see, Justin Sun’s terms of service explicitly approve his inability to transact under HF 22.2; yet he had the stupidity to call it a criminal act.

The only criminality is that these terms of service still state that Steemit Inc. does not control the Steem blockchain, which is factually untrue. It’s the reason why their official communications always feign fake ignorance of new developments that censor, freeze, and seize the assets of Justin’s opposition, while Steemit Inc. instantly removes any dissenting witnesses from the consensus ranks.