Anyone monitoring the traffic outside of Apple can do it, as well. IIRC TLS client certificate information is not encrypted on the wire, but I'd need to review modern TLS protocol negotiation to confirm. This would allow anyone monitoring Apple's upstream, passively, to perform this same location logging that Apple does.
Apple knows this, so shipping systems that leak information in this way is tacit acceptance of the military spying going on on the networks to which Apple's servers are connected.
“Anyone monitoring the traffic outside of Apple can do it, as well”
Well this is true of every single connection made by every single app on every single device, for every upstream.
That means everyone is tacitly accepting the military spying going on on the networks to which their servers are connected.
That’s not actually an unreasonable position as far as I’m concerned, and you previous comments about this being true unless Tor is embedded have some validity. I say some because I’m unconvinced that Tor is quite ready to handle all traffic yet.
What is unreasonable is your focus on Apple.
By excluding the fact that your complaints are a general problem with TCP/IP and apply to essentially any service, you don’t seem to be doing a great job of informing people about the reality of the problem.
It’s also worth noting that if your position has now moved to how the tracking could be being done by someone monitoring Apple’s network rather than Apple themselves, you are tacitly acknowledging that your claim that Apple is keeping records of your location are just speculation.
