I agree it's undesirable that call history is sent to Apple - but it's pretty easy to notice if you use facetime across devices that the call history is synced.
Namely, Apple chose to provide this information to government surveillance when they could have (and indeed promised) to design it in a way that allows for the iPhone to be used in sensitive situations and by people who need security from state coercion and violence.
Anyone who cares about state coercion and violence should know phone calls are about the least sensitive way to communicate.
This is not familiar to me at all. If true, note the remaining points: the manner in which this data was synchronized allowed this material to be provided to law enforcement (Apple had other options) and Apple also included information from third party communication tools used by some people (mistakenly) to avoid being surveilled.
And remember Apple is a positioning iCloud as a cloud for dummies solution so adding choice comes with trade offs.