And watching the latest political news they seem to have been widly successful with that goal :P

Actually, this is finance, not (pure) economics. What happens is the following: In the Capital Asset pricing model (CAPM) model, which is the most simple (and therefore widely used) method to value assets that have volatility, the risk-free asset is one of the key pillars. This asset is represented as a sure bet, and is the minimum return an investor is willing to have for a given amount invested. Then any other asset is simply a function of the risk free asset, the expected return, and the risk premium of the volatility.

If there were no US treasury bonds, this risk free asset would "disappear", so the whole method of valuation of assets would be impacted. Actually, this is a real problem right now in finance, since after the discussion of the US debt the question of whether the risk free asset should be the US treasury bond or other asset (for example, the German treasury bond was an option, or a "pool" of different treasury bonds) was starting to be discussed. Google it, there are several papers about it. So, yeah, actually eliminating the treasury bond would have a much deeper impact than it would appear at first glance.

...Or expect a service of editor-for-hire to appear. If there are freelance writers created by this change, why not freelance editors? I'll be surprised if it doesn't exist already.

As parent says, Prey project is a must in any laptop. Since nobody posted it here's the link [preyproject.com].

To put this in a bit of context, Robinson Crusoe Island (Isla Juan Fernandez is the official name) is very isolated and mostly inhabited by fishermen, and some scientific personnel. It was heavily struck by the tsunami after the earthquake last year, so the national state TV (TVN) conducted a series of short shows about the reconstruction of the island. The flight was carrying personnel to record a follow-up show.

This was a military operated flight, but only brought civilians (two well-known TV presenters, persons from the National Culture Council, camera men, producers, and people related with the TV network, a businessman and philanthropist which had a ONG regarding the reconstruction, and personnel of said ONG) to record the show, so to answer your question, no, probably there were no problems regarding the tracking of military operations.

So far the weather conditions plus the fact that the plane crashed at sea has caused that only few bodies have been found (4 confirmed out of 21), so the signal from the iPhone was an important lead to the victims' bodies whereabouts. It certainly beats the clairvoyants they are also using (seriously).

About the insurance companies: from several years they have been developing techniques to improve insurance pricing using the information available on the internet. I work in credit risk and data mining, so I've discussed the issue with some of the people working in the industry (the credit history is also used to price insurances). The main idea is that the "risky" behaviour can be detected if the browsing history of the person is disclosed, so tracking and profiling people is a potentially useful and profitable idea... to them obviously.

Actually, probably this is my fault, by getting lost in the translation. The intention of the law is that the ISP cannot use your data in order to identify you for using the web, and at the same time, they must make sure that their services (servers and such, not your PC) do not get infected by viruses or other malware. What you get onto your own computer is your business, and they can't monitor that. Sorry for the faulty translation. :P