Agreed. They're taking part in dangerous work, with very little protection...the laws regarding the activities they participate in are ridiculously overpowered, and have occasionally landed teenagers in prison for years.
A scorched earth policy regarding those who come after them is pretty much the only rational course of action, given the consequences of being positively identified as taking part in those activities. They aren't equipped (nor are most of them of the disposition), to kill, physically intimidate, or otherwise silence people that cross them or hold evidence against them, as most organized crime groups or corrupt law enforcement officers do. So, they have to take extreme actions to prevent people from wanting to gather evidence against them. Intimidation via a constant stream of uneasy feelings about how much of your life they can and will reveal is generally pretty powerful.
It's also probably important that they stick close to the side of "right" enough of the time that it is unpopular to attack them, even if they occasionally cause some actual harm to people who maybe didn't deserve that level of harm.
In this case, though, I'd say this was a funny result. A lot of "security experts" are nothing of the sort, and are deserving of ridicule at the very least. If this prevents incompetent security contractors from suckling at the government teat, I'm all for it.
Their goal in this case is to discourage people from messing with them. I'd say that their actions may have achieved exactly that.