"Plagiarism detection software" can most certainly be misused and abused - it's quite a slippery slope, difficult to administer fairly, and likely to create unwarranted chilling effects. The author was almost certainly referring to its ease and accessibility for misuse by educational authorities.

For example - citing inconclusive results from a plagiarism detection suite as a reason to have a meeting with a student or group, would induce large amounts of anxiety and stress is most people, even if the professors intention is that 90% of cases would be thrown out after the student/group testifies. It can lead to infighting in groups in particular, even when no cheating occurs. And the in person meeting is almost certainly rather stressful for most students.

And how many educational authorities are quick to jump to judgement and words like "just admit you did it, and we'll punish you less?" Presumption of guilt is the most reliable way to sow distrust and discord, and yet it is often done by lay people, whose negative actions are amplified by their positions of authority.

Underage students in particular should not be expected to react reasonably under such adversarial circumstances.

And even if the law and society expects it, I'd argue that most adults cannot handle novel adversarial circumstances well. Police interactions, and interactions with educational authorities over matters of discipline and cheating are most certainly novel, adversarial, and hugely stressful for most people, and it is done for remarkably little gain in terms of actually catching cheating, practically speaking.

To tie it off - I've been accused of cheating twice in my academic career.

Once when I was in 6th grade, when the assistant principle and a police officer pulled me into an isolated meeting and gaslighted me to confess to my guilt for 30 minutes. In the end, they "realized" they had pulled aside the wrong student. And then, that 2nd student they pulled aside had also turned out to have not been cheating. Such gross incompetence and psychological abuse should never be allowed to happen to children going through the most formative experiences in their life.

The 2nd time, my undergrad group was called to a meeting with one week's worth of notice, that our code had been flagged by plagiarism software, and that we would have to testify if we had cheated or not, or risk having a 0. My partner was a miserable wreck for that entire week. Turns out, when we got there, the code had just flagged some unimportant boiler plate code as having been copied from somewhere else. Not even the part of the code that actually solves for the problem, just the code that initialize variables and classes. The professor was apologetic, but that week of torment was for naught.

Both of these instances were in well regarded, well funded public schools, in the heart of the California Bay Area. I imagine it would be even worse in less well off areas, and geographies where education is not taken seriously.

The article is most certainly referring to instances of it being sloppily and maliciously used in ways to intimidate students, even if plagiarism detection tech can be used in a responsible manner. If the technology requires rigorous ethical training and screening to be used by authorities properly, which is often not provided to any reasonable degree, then it should not be used at all. I would rather every cheater be let go, than have 10 innocent kids be tormented and punished for a wrong they never committed.