Sure, but to what extent should it be open? I'd imagine EBT balances count as "sensitive information" which should not be directly available to every single member of the general public; the general public should not need the ability to determine that I'm dependent on food stamps at all, let alone my exact EBT balance.
That would mean that some degree of access control is required, which in turn means that - short of implementing food stamps as a cryptocurrency - there would need to be a central authority delegating that access. That central authority, in this case, was (allegedly) experiencing a surge of traffic from some random startup; restricting that traffic is not an unreasonable response.
The article tries to convince the reader that "but think of the poor people!" is a legitimate excuse for unauthorized overloading of service. I ain't buying it, not for one bit.
The service was being used for exactly what the government was presumably paying Confluent to deliver -- the ability for EBT beneficiaries to see their balance. If Confluent can't deliver on serving customer data to customers, they have no business holding that contract.
