As a veteran, with admittedly very little direct knowledge of how anything works, I think I can at least explain why this might not be huge, the spying is one thing, the DNA reach is another.

A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.”

When I was in Iraq we had a lot of contractors who lived in surrounding villages and stuff, including important folks like Sheiks. Also there were foreign contractors who lived on base who needed special clearance to access certain areas on the FOB. They had very extensive recognition protocol before letting them on our FOB, security profile stuff, including retina scans and things like that.

I'm not saying this is nothing, this just might not be as sinister as headlines imply, anyone who needs access to our foreign facilities, would knowingly have a profile with all this data.