I'm not surprised about this at all. Since the company (CipherTrace) is unable to provide proof of their claims, we can feel confident that Monero transactions are 100% private. Still, the responsibility lies in the person himself. If you're careless by not preserving your anonymity on the Monero blockchain, you can easily get caught. I think surveillance/analytics companies will be able to track Monero transactions through centralized exchanges, though. Outside this scope, they won't have any luck at all. Imagine if people started using decentralized exchanges and conducting XMR transactions without a middleman. It would be a nightmare for both governments and surveillance companies as we speak.

CipherTrace may be claiming to trace Monero transactions just to bring governments' attention (and to scare off Monero users too). No matter what their efforts are, Monero will continue to improve in the future. That's thanks to its decentralized and open source nature. With a plethora of developers working on it, Monero will remain the best privacy coin in the world. Let's hope that it stays that way in order to render government surveillance efforts completely useless in the long run. Just my thoughts