At the time of the Pass Key development the cars were of huge value. The security at that time did a great job protecting the owners of those cars. I would dare to suspect owners maintained possesion of thier porperty just because of this deterrant.
The newer key security is even more state of the art and more difficult to violate. During that era cars could be stolen with a screwdriver. This car needed a very smart thief, with a screwdriver, and a bag of resistors. No car is safe from a real smart patient thief.. but a real smart thief would be thinking of the economics of either stealing 20 cars or 1 very difficult one.
To disable it you can either put in a resistor, or get a module that will send the .. what is it 700 hz signal?... to the PCM.. Or get the problem of heavy keys or dirty tumbler key resistance reader replaced.
That was one, smart, moose. Too bad about the mountan lion with only a Ford.