>The discussion of technology should be able to withstand the good and bad points of its conception

True, but that's a poor excuse to make up hypothetical problems that don't even exist. Tying it into the current craze about data privacy is a bit too transparent imo.

The journalists should do better, the article makes a downright dishonest interpretation of the issue by shoehorning it into a lens of a long ongoing controversy about data privacy that is in no way applicable to the technology they're discussing.

The privacy issue is not only hypothetical, but far enough off in the future that it'd be a better fit for a sci-fi novel then nature.com reporting.

The problem is not discussing the downsides, the problem is doing it dishonestly, as the article does.