Apple patents tech that lets government disable iPhone video, camera and wi-fi

This is one patent I really hope gets used in litigation.

I believe we call that a mobile device manager. Only this one is much more pervasive and used by the Feds. I know of few companies that do not use one nowadays.

Is this not old news though? The first time I was really relieved I use CyanogenMod in particular was when the story broke the an American company was actively encouraging carriers to use a special monitoring system that cooperated with the necessary phone-side code baked into the firmware. This caused shock waves, ironically dwarfed by PRISMgasm. I believe it was CarrierIQ. The current revelations blew the scope out of the water; it took me a while to even re-jog my memory using Google.

I could see this tech being a hit with theatres (that is - if they stick around.)

I find the idea that there are legitimate uses for this technology a bit questionable.

There have been important photos taken in locker rooms.

There is a reasonable expectation of privacy at times, but it is enforced by social pressure, not a technology backdoor.

If someone really wants to take surreptitious locker room photos, they can, and do, find ways around tech like this. The inverse is also true. If someone has a legitimate reason to take a photo in a verboten place (locker room or protest) it's much more likely they will be stopped by this.

Yeah, that's not going to get abused at all.