Honestly, that sounds pretty fantastic. I've been using 3rd party tools/extensions to do this sort of thing in corporate and government environments for years, but having the attestation go all the way down to the hardware level is a big value-add, especially with so much ransomware/spyware/extortion/espionage going on these days.
Can someone please explain to me how the author might see this level of security as a bad thing?
nothing. there's nothing you can do to stop that.
The only question is whether they will trust metal detectors to prevent whistleblowers from bringing in these devices, or if they will rely on strip searches and CCTV.