OK, let me rephrase. If this tool does something you want, but also does things you don't want, then it may not be the right tool for the job. (A hammer will kill pesky houseflies, but it will also leave holes in your walls.) Try it like this:
The tool is perfectly suitable for what they need. The problem is that they didn't scrub the data they collected and then destroyed everything else collected.
The TSA wants to collect information about each passenger (whether or not they are carrying prohibited items). They have a tool that collects that information, but also collects information that the TSA doesn't need, but that has potential to upset people (images of their privates). If the TSA goes forward with using that tool, they can expect blowback. It might be a great tool for collecting the desired information, but that by-product causes problems - perhaps enough problems that it's worth finding a different tool.
If I'm walking past a security camera in a public location and it gets pictures of me naked because I'm wearing no clothes, I have little reason to be upset about my nudity being captured. What the TSA is currently doing is taking steps to expose me beyond what I've chosen to expose in public. The problem here is that there's a large population who think they're wearing the finest new Emporer fashion and don't like the idea that they've been naked all along.
This isn't so much a technical problem as a management problem. I don't think it's intentional or malicious, but it might qualify as dumb. The snark comes in when you've got an ex-CIO pooh-poohing project management at the same time that Google is having a really hard time putting this one to bed.
I don't have much say on the management issue but I'd imagine if I'm a big believer in PM processes, this would irk me. As I noted, I think the real problem here is that Google didn't properly handle the data. Either the people running the project or some layer of management should have realized the potential of the data they were collecting and ensuring it was handled more appropriately.