Here's the real Occum's Razor here:
Does the "kill switch" remotely disable the mobile/cellular capabilities of the phone? Or does it completely disable the device, thus bricking it?
These are smartphones, and they're used by many people for more than just a phone. I'd even argue that the function used the least on these devices, is the actual phone itself.
I rarely see someone having an actual voice conversation on a phone these, days, but people spend hours and hours doing everything else with them.
So if there's a civil uprising, martial law, and the .gov decides to shunt an entire city (Boston Bombers anyone? Greece? Turkey last year?, we've seen this many times already), then they also render these devices inert for much more than just communications devices.
- My ex-wife can no longer monitor her blood sugar (Type 1 diabetic, 100% digitally monitored via iPhone)
- Digital locks on your home no longer are able to be unlocked (keyless entry with NFS, etc.)
- Credit card information, details, photos, videos, other data is now unavailable
The chilling effect of this alone, should cause hundreds of thousands of people to step up and march on their congressperson's front door.
The potential abuses of this are so far reaching, far superseding the cost of replacing a phone handset that happens to get stolen.
I'd rather see the funding go into a user-driven device locating capability, with remote wipe/reporting on the other end instead of a remote kill switch controlled by corporations and the .gov.
Very scary stuff happening here. Verrrrry scary.