If Apple can disable third party apps remotely, who’s iPhone is it, anyway?

And metaphorically speaking, the devil can look good, it doesn't have to ugly and have horns.

Talking about evil, I bought a Mac Mini, and iPod touch, which was suposed to be free, with student discount, and never recived it (the voucher). I emailed customer support, nothing yet.

The only thing I have is going back to one of their stores, and start complaining until somebody resolves the issue.

$300.00 they owe me back, is a lot of money.

The most notable thing about the article in question is that the author seems surprised and concerned that this functionality is there and that there isn't a huge banner on apple.com about it.

RIM has access to the SSL keys used to encrypt traffic between Blackberry handsets and the BES (I don't recall if they do Handset-RIM and RIM-BES crypto or the keys are just escrowed). There are allegedly Nokia handset firmwares that allow silent keying of the microphone, and OnStar has been used by the US government in the same way allegedly, as well.

For science sake people, know what decade you're living in. Network providers aren't going to sell you a device that they can't remotely manage. Unless you're bringing a device to the network yourself it's definitely "owned" in at least the script kiddie sense by the carriers.