[Shivetya]

I don't understand why there is any support for this ability in a phone. So they can prevent you from calling for help, from recording them, or what not? How much of a phone is disabled?

Finally, if they can do then its likely they will have phones produced only usable by important people who will be immune so who will those people be? How do they get their phones. Let alone, if its in the phone some group will figure it out and trigger it which would be pretty much awesome in my book

Government should never be given any ability to suppress speech or the expression of it and my communicating with another person is expression. They have no right to prevent it, especially under the guise of get them all and let God sort it out mentality that they hide behind to trample individual rights

[anigbrowl]

Because there's an epidemic of cell phone theft, many cellphone manufacturers don't provide a reliable mechanism for the victim of theft to deactivate their phone, and third party solutions are hit-and-miss. The primary purpose of the legislation is to require manufacturers to provide users with a way to remotely brick their phone. They're also required to get the user's permission for this as part of the phone setup, and make it easy for the user to disable the feature at any time. That's why there is support for this ability in a phone.