Yes, it's easy to fuck up. But a responsible company implements mitigations. And LinkedIn can absolutely afford to do much more.
If your logging is on an obscure enough endpoint (password reset flow in the Android app's API gateway), you may forget to add that endpoint to the bot, just like you may forget to mark it as sensitive in your logging system.
At this scale, the developers working on these esoteric endpoints might not even be aware that such a bot exists.
If the method works, and it shows that the logging feature Fred got so much credit for is storing passwords, what are the political implications of that? Can our intrepid middle manager steal some of Fred's glory? Or is Fred an ally and it should be carefully handled? Or do they sit on it and wait until an opportune moment to destroy Fred?
This is the kind of reasoning process I think goes on, because I've seen very few large organisations make actually-good technical decisions.
Are their psychopaths and Machiavellian schemers in management? Certainly. Are they the majority? Almost certainly not, unless you're working for absolutely the wrong company.
As the Brits would say, "cock-up before conspiracy."
And unfortunately, a lot of people aren't emotionally intelligent enough to recognize that many managers use emotional reactions to redirect the room away from them. Because if you're the angry one, people won't ask questions like "didn't someone mention the possibility of this to you 6 months ago?"
I don't really agree with that, but let's say I do. Middle management is a unique position where their sensitivity is a bigger liability to everyone else. They have some power, but not a lot. They ironically have higher visibility in the company than upper management. And the job requires 0 technical understanding of what they manage.
So that puts them in an awkward position that is often abused. If they feel someone is going to get in trouble, they will make sure that's not them, which is a terribly common instinct. When a developer tells the company there is a problem to address that could threaten the product, that's a good thing that should be welcomed. Instead, many middle managers see that developer as the problem.
> Someone who can't factor that into their actions and communications is frankly lacking basic social skills.
No argument there.