This isn't a law, it was a voluntary agreement between the carriers to make all phones they (the carriers) sell have a permanent shutter sound. This was done to stop the moral panic due to "upskirting" on subways/etc.

Since Apple sold iPhones only through carriers initially, they complied with this agreement.

A better example of this would be Apple disabling FaceTime on phones sold in the UAE, which is the result of a law, and the feature stays disabled even if the region is changed from/the phone is removed from the UAE.

Camera shutter sounds aren’t a moral issue apple has staked a position on.

Wouldn't it be nice, as a courtesy from Apple, if your phone emitted a sound everytime the government attempted to access private data off your phone

These things are quite obviously very different and I can’t find a way to read this in good faith (except perhaps from an extreme libertarian point of view), let alone in a good light.

One is a law requiring phones to try to alert people whose privacy is being invaded in some circumstances.

The other is a law requiring phones to invade people’s privacy in some circumstances.

I think it is quite reasonable to follow the former, just as it could be reasonable for laws to require phones to broadcast tsunami warnings or meet various antitrust requirements.

> One is a law requiring phones to try to alert people whose privacy is being invaded in some circumstances.

A law that restricts my freedom to customize my device. Plus their privacy was being invaded from the moment that I looked at them, taking a photo would not change anything.

> just as it could be reasonable for laws to require phones to broadcast tsunami warnings

As long as it is configurable, sure.

A software tweak is a lot easier to change than hardware accelerated encryption.