pacplyer, safetypee;
Re your posts, (with which, it should be no surprise, I strongly agree):
There are two major trends emerging in the industry at present - the twin trends towards the de-regulation of safety, (under the notions of SMS and the "internal audit" process) and the trend towards the criminalization of accidents, (aimed not at "the accountable executive(s)" but at the front-end crew). I suspect many in the industry see this but I haven't seen the two connected in discussion yet.
In other words, at precisely the moment that regulatory authorities are moving towards SMS which is based upon data-collection (with little or no legal protections for same), the judicial authority of some countries like France but which now includes Canada, are moving towards the criminal investigation as priority, with the possibility of criminal prosecution.
While at present it is a stretch to state that collecting flight safety information under the requirements of SMS but not providing suitable and appropriate legal protections for same is like forcing the collection of evidence for the prosecution, if these twin trends continue, this statement will seem mild once "the public interest" notion takes hold and politicians cave to the resulting pressures to prosecute rather than investigate and prevent accidents.
And in all this, the leading-edge "chill" which will be sent by the first case to use CVRs and historical FOQA data to prosecute rather than learn will have long-since killed data-collection programs which are the very stuff of SMS, (despite executive illusions that having the right documentation in place is sufficient - see this month's FSF's "AeroSafety World"
editorial by Bill Voss.
And, as it was in Canada and elsewhere, (Brazil, Italy, now France), it is crews and other frontline people who will be the 50,000A fuse for organizational failure and failures in executive leadership in SMS.
Those are the patterns now unfolding.