I imagine it has something to do with the fact Ghostery is owned by an advertising company. Not sure if that is this particular "attack", but a lot of people use it without understanding why it is made and it periodically gets widely reported to some backlash.
That they were/are being paid for sending analytics to ad companies. I actually don't mind, but it should be in red blinking 20 point script on the page where you download it.
I can't find the news.ycombinator threads, though.
With recent onslaught of attack on Ghostery and Ad-block, I wonder if these two tools are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: help people.