Thanks for the responses. I am not surprised there is such a long history about this topic. Thanks for the references. I am about half way thru them now.
And yes, the jist of ProfTech's response is basically what I was looking for. While I would not go so far as to say that a company should avoid doing this sort of thing, I would say the honorable thing to do (again my opinion) would be to include a section in the user documentation that fully discloses the extent there is remote connectivity, how it is secured, how a user can explicitly control it, and what functionality is associated with it.
I actually tend to give most of these companies (especially US based) the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their intentions. The fact of the matter is that ANY remote connection from your network is something that could theoretically by leveraged by ANYONE on the public internet to attempt or successfully exploit. I simply feel I deserve to be aware of the level of exposure I introduce to my networks. Does that mean that I don't have any open ports/connections open on my networks? ... absolutely not. But I had the opportunity to evaluate them and configure them smartly.
Thanks again for all the info.