> governments have the right to mandate corporate speech “if the information in the disclosure is reasonably related to a substantial governmental interest and is purely factual.”
(https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-speech/when-the-gover...)
Since that would not be the case here, I do not believe it would be legally defensible for the government to compel false statements out of both Apple and Amazon.
(IANAL, so do take this with a grain of salt)
The government could say "look here, this is an actual national security issue" and Apple, Amazon, etc could say "oh shit, you're right - how can we help?"
If this were a real national security risk, what incentive would Apple, Amazon, etc have to tell divulge the truth rather than cooperating with the government? This is vastly different than saying no to a requested NSA backdoor.
If true, this is vastly different from the government requesting a backdoor or various warrant canaries, this would be an actual national security threat.