One of the reasons that the licensing authorities dislike the Baofengs is that they can be easily re-programmed (by unskilled users) to operate on most any VHF / UHF frequency.
They are legal for use by licensed Radio Amateurs (because Hams can legally build and modify their own gear), but the importers used this loop-hole to sell them to other users (eg CB, MURS, commercial two way, etc). Unfortunately, the lax administration by the authorities have allowed this to become a serious issue.
First, and the reason for hate by the licencing authorities is, that they have emissions on other bands (higher harmonics), sometimes way above the allowed levels.
And second, the more problematic here, is that they're cheap. Every airsofter, milsimer, prepper and mall ninja will buy one or two, in "tactical" camo colors with "tactical" antenna, usually one of those huge ones, painted camo, with some kind of "tactical" camo holster, to look "tactical"... while at the same time, they have no idea about frequencies, legalities and just use the preprogrammed channels or input a random frequency in the VFO mode. Before baofeng, this wasn't an issue... cheapest radios were in $150++ range, and paying $600 (or more) for four airsofters was a lot of money... now they can get a set for $100. And in camo and "tactical" designs.
Doing what the person in the article did requires not just $30 of equipment but also at least some knowledge (which frequency, what tones, what timing, how to use audacity or whatever to generate those tones, etc.), and most of the "normal" abusers of baofeng can't do that... just look at the questions on /r/baofeng on reddit... most of them are "we can't hear eachoter", because they're looking at channel numbers instead of frequencies and/or have tones enabled, and "can i listen to <some service not on uhf>?".
I should have said that there are many problems with Baofengs and similar.
Certainly spurious emissions are the big one. The manufacturers have made some attempt to fit LPFs for the ham bands, but simply don't bother for the bands that they don't legally cover.
And yeah, the "cheap and nasty" aspect is simply the other side of the same coin. If the manufactures had fitted LPFs for each possible band, plus sought type-approval for other bands, they would be unaffordable.
Not to mention that removing keypad panel programming would block any attempt at type approval in the first place.
I got one of those Baofengs. I wander what other mischief you could commit with them.