The article says the same. I think the point is to be aware and try to build things in a way to minimize the chance for abuse. There's nuance and the author says as much.

"Should we have a national database of, say, religious beliefs? Almost instinctively the answer is no."

What about an ad system that can predict beliefs and home addresses? Ooops.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, every telecoms provider, every modern car maker..

Technology isn’t going to be a moderator of a police state. We already have technologies that are used for oppression, exploitation, abuse, and so on. They’re just not being used this way by governments in the same way they are being used by criminals. Bitcoin is used to collect ransoms. Telegram/signal is used to plan conspiracies to commit crimes. GPS and location services are used to monitor trafficking victims. There are stories of cartels running their own cellular networks.

A lack of technology doesn’t restrict a police state, see East Germany in the ‘60s-‘80s. It does, however, create more opportunity for crimes. In Seattle there was a shooting at the bite of Seattle festival. They don’t have firm ideas about the identities of all the suspects. There would be a greater chance that they would know who they are looking for if there were more securities cameras deployed at large public festivals.

To prevent a police state you need public participation in governance and a population that lives in the real world and not fantasy lands created by a intentional misinterpretation of events.