How much bounty would Apple pay, say if somebody steals one and sends it to them? Is it illegal to them to make such an offer?
On the other hand, perhaps Apple could secretly partner with a law enforcement team and purchase one for themselves. $15k and $30k are literally nothing to Apple with their warchest in the tens of billions.
I imagine that telling someone, "Steal that TV and I'll give you $100 for it" would, additionally, make you a conspirator to the crime of theft.
All they have to do is discretely obtain the device in question and have a few good engineers quietly pick it apart for a few weeks to figure out how it works. They then patch the vulnerability in a regular update claiming they discovered it as part of normal procedure and nobody takes notice.
Edit: the legality of the device itself is kinda interesting to me. Like, even if it is doing something illegal (like using stolen code or something), how would Apple prove it as long as it was only sold to law enforcement? If the police aren't asking too many questions and Apple can't legally acquire one, how do they prove it? I suppose they'd have to gather enough circumstantial evidence to get a judge to issue a subpoena, but things get a bit dark and fuzzy.