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

I wonder how this conflicts with the laws about Privacy of Data. For example, if a company shares a dataset that contains sensible information with a University (this CAN be done, at least in my country, with a contract. We compromise to safeguard the data and to not violate Privacy laws, consultants also do this everywhere) for the purpose of developing a model or some other application that needs the data. The professor then publishes a paper with the main (non-corporate secret) results, and uses public funds for an undergrad or something. Does this mean the professor can be sued into giving the information away? Doing this clearly violates the laws on privacy, but would conflict directly with the Freedom of Information Act. Compelling with one law contradicts the other... I do not think that this can be upheld in court for EVERY case, instead it would have to be analyzed in a case-by-case basis using (possible costly) lawsuits. Then again, IANAL, so maybe I'm wrong... (Full disclosure: I am a researcher in data mining)

I'm a measure this type of things in a company and I think the best way to go is to measure the value of the time everyone else gains because of your existence. Example: If you help people with IE and they use it to enter other systems, then it's time they gain because they can readily do their jobs. Estimate (just ask) the salary of the average Joe who works there and simply multiply that for all the time they could be without using the system (estimate it again). Adding up every other function you perform and substracting your salary gives your net value... It WILL be greater than zero, probably by a large margin. Hope it helps.