Last week’s news that Apple had incorporated some form of application blacklist into the iPhone 3G certainly got people talking. While the purpose of said blacklist wasn’t apparent, there was still quite a bit of argument over whether or not an application blacklist was a method that Apple should be employing.

Now we’ve got confirmation from Steve Jobs himself that a “kill switch” mechanism does exist on the iPhone. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Steve had this to say:

Mr. Jobs confirmed such a capability exists, but argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program—one that stole users’ personal data, for example—to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he says.

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