Apple needs to vocally lobby for privacy legislation or it'll be way too easy for the internet industry to squash it. Facebook and Google have been using trade groups to fight privacy legislation for years where it can be "out of sight, out of mind" [1][2]. Having the most valuable company in the tech industry go against them in a public way would expose the rest of them in a way they've been able to avoid until now.

[1] https://calmatters.org/articles/facebook-even-as-it-apologiz...

[2] http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/facebook-google-facial-recogni...