To quote from the article: "These repositories, belonging to more than 16,000 organizations, were originally posted to GitHub as public, but were later set to private [..]" Once things are public, they will forever remain public (in some form). That's how the internet works.

This just in: Accessibly of the past by the present an unforeseen facet of reality.

Thank you all who contributed to this project. Truly an amazing community. /s