Caveat emptor. If you don't research the model of cellphone you buy in a deeply technical sense before you buy it, it's your own fault if you're carrying around a bug. Myself, I not only got one that will noticably change its external display and can be set to make a noise if any active links besides service handshaking are "running", but I hooked it up to a Mac and poked about its firmware besides, completely disabling the locator feature. It also helps to buy one designed and made for, say, the Japanese market and only imported here, since something made in Tokyo or Singapore is far less likely to include Homerland Sekurity "features".
Anyone who leaves their cellphone's location feature on, even by not selecting "turn off" from a menu, is carrying a tracking device that is actively reporting each and every place they go every day. And it's not just .gov that might use this, but marketing companies want to see just where you go so they can spam you with more junk mail and "personalized offers" while building a consumer profile of you.
Yes, any cellphone can be tracked in a relative sense via triangulation between signal towers, but that's imprecise and takes a concerted effort by a technician to do for one phone. The location feature constantly reports to automated systems that may keep logs.
Be informed, make informed decisions, or be part of the unthinking herds.