It's a stretch to say anonymized reporting of nearby lost devices is abuse and part of a botnet, but you can turn off the U1 chip in settings. Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Networking & Wireless
Apple then shares this data with the US federal government without the requirement for a warrant, whenever they ask via a FISA request. No probable cause of criminal activity is required: it can be used for pure fishing expeditions, or parallel construction.
I don't think it's reasonable that using the GPS functionality in my device also means the device manufacturer should perpetually receive a real-time log of everywhere my device goes that is then made available to federal investigators whenever they wish to see it.
The legal definition of a warrant is a written order issued by a judicial officer or other authorized person for the purpose of the administration of justice.
A written request by the FISA court, which is staffed by eleven federal district court judges, is de facto a warrant.
What I think you really object to is the authority and accountability of the FISA court. In particular, the conditions under which such warrants are issued. But that is a problem with the FISA court, not the companies that receive the warrants.
In Apple's case, they even preserve vulnerabilities in the system to aid the state in exploiting this circumstance.
It's to the point now where it's not inaccurate to point out that almost all Apple devices function as an extended sensor network for US federal police and military intelligence, given that a) they can access the data at any time and b) Apple makes sure not to secure the data from this illegal intrusion.
If you look at the history, and I think you are referring to iCloud data, Apple designed a way to protect existing iCloud data. From what has been published, Apple made a mistake in letting the US Government know in advance -- before the software was released.
Because Apple then did not continue and protect the data, the story was spun, by "the media", that Apple has somehow "collaborated" with allowing data collection. I don't think that is the true story.
If you look at every other new product or service that has been introduced even before and after the iCloud backup incident, privacy and not being able to obtain data is / was an inherent feature.
What I think most likely happened with iCloud data is that Apple was "coerced" into capitulation -- explicitly not collaboration. A threat was made, if you go forward with your plan, we will do this.
What was the threat? Something possible - Apple ships devices that depend on strong encryption. Strong encryption is still regulated by the US Commerce department -- a US Government agency.
Even the most recent event when OCSP checks failed -- the developer certificate ID check, Apple's response was to say that they stopped logging the IP addresses. This was also mis-represented, likely by folks that did / do not understand that OCSP requests are made via HTTP requests and almost every HTTP server, by default, logs the client IP address. You have to actively not log the addresses -- which is what Apple's apology statement said they changed.
Yes, all mobile manufacturers seed their AGPS databases from phones they control. Basically sending data that tells them what SSIDs are visible at certain locations.
But I'm pretty sure Apple is actively not combining that data with your identity. They have zero reason to do that.
Whether Apple runs a join on this data in their databases or not is irrelevant.