The FCC approved Verizon’s request because they were requesting a very limited lock of 60 days in order to prevent “zero down” device theft and resale by people who manage to hijack or create a Verizon account using stolen credentials and identities, order a phone by mail from whomever, and then never activate it. Verizon provides a statistic of several thousand people last year having their identity stolen and abused to get iPhones, and they must continue to unlock phones (without user action required) at 60 days unless those phones are flagged as acquired through identity fraud (and thus essentially bricked for all carriers, terminating the get rich quick scheme).

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759602/verizon-60-day-p...

Hopedully the context helps provide some background for why this might not be as scummy as it seems without that.