Possibly the idea is to prevent malware already on the phone from logging location data while the radios are dark, and then uploading the historical location data when the phone reconnects?

That said, it's obviously a very limited form of protection. I guess it speaks to the sad state of mobile security that this is the best Snowden and Bunnie can come up with - the only sane choice for a potential target is to assume the mobile device is untrusted and try to reduce the scope for it to snitch on the user.