This might seem paranoid but when I think about Snowden, Manning, Asange, and recent events in the extended Arab spring if I was on the ground protesting it would have been nice to have a sure way to non-destructively disable the modem hardware while still having full use of my N900. A hardware switch would be ideal but a snippable jumper or solder bridged pads to the power so someone in the know could disable or add a switch wouldn't cost anything but would give a major benefit to a small number of ultra-tinfoil hatted users.
Currently the modem comes up on bootup and then can be disabled after say 20 sec, easily long enough to take the IMEI and cell if not multi-cell triangulate.
Another thing for the tinfoil hat crowd is can we rewrite the IMEI on the planned modems as needed, it might be nice for those illegal immigrants and such who use burner prepaid SIM cards.
Did there ever turn to be documentation on modem access for SIM and/or uSIM toolkit?