Dismissing the entire security community, which has universally decried this, and the entire privacy community likewise as "screeching voices of the minority" shows exactly where this is coming from.
They are fully aware that what they are doing is wrong. They know it will harm people. That's why they kept it secret. They just don't care.
This is the end result of intellectual monoculture. To whatever small extent they spoke to any security or privacy advocates about this, their concerns were overridden because by definition anyone objecting to this was evil.
Just another brick in the wall.