It’s not a good thing to lock out users who are clearly and demonstrably the owners of a device. Automated protections are good, but there should be procedures in place to handle cases like these.
That's great in a world where people are unable to resell devices, but the concept of "ownership" is fluid in a world where users can sell their devices. I can think of many scams that could abuse a system where anyone who presents an ID associated with a receipt can claim "ownership" of a device and bypass various security measures. Keep in mind, Apple's threat vectors range from "random phone thief" to "state level actors", with equally as varied clientele.
Still, Apple chose to keep the keys of Activation Lock although they could have made an autonomous system that they could not disable themselves.
By keeping a copy of the keys, they are also getting the responsibility to use them when the owner needs them because if they don’t, it raises serious concerns as to why they keep the keys in first place.
The problem is that you can't permanently disable it.
To me, the risk of something like what happened to OP is more concerning than being able to lock a thief out of using/reselling my laptop. So I'd prefer to just disable Activation Lock entirely, and prevent it from ever being enabled. Of course, the ability to do that essentially reduces the theft deterrent somewhat, so Apple wouldn't want to implement this ability.
If somebody has POSSESSION of the Mac, and either:
1. An Apple ID registered with the Mac
2. A proof of purchase
3. A court ruling establishing them as the owner.
Presume they are the owner.
Regarding state level actors, they are not interested in stealing people’s MacBooks, they are interested in stealing peoples Data. Removing the activation lock from a Mac != exposing the data on it. Regarding common thieves, see above.
If Apple isn’t confident that they can authenticate ownership, they have no business locking out Macs. It is really not as hard to authenticate ownership as you think though in cases where the person claiming ownership has possession of the Mac.
