Making noise about this isn't a sign that students weren't smart enough to think to cover the camera. The article said that students had covered it. But that'

Making noise about this isn't a sign that students weren't smart enough to think to cover the camera. The article said that students had covered it. But that's only a very immediate reactive response. A more proactive and impactful response would be to hurt the companies involved (e.g., bad PR, loss of sales, machine recall costs, legal problems), put fear into other companies doing things like that, and hopefully also prompt long-lacking better privacy legislation. Hence, the noise.