Anything that can go sparky sparky and start smoking, you want to be able to turn off.
There are plenty of reasons but really it's irrelevant, transponders are for ATC to track cooperative aircraft, for emergency tracking there's ELT and military radar anyway.
The issue here is poor radar coverage over the oceans. If a pilot wanted to kill everyone on board, they can do it no matter what the transponder is squawking
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