gchriste,
Your question seems reasonable and is the kind of misunderstanding found in the popular press. But it's actually an example of the type of abuse we are trying to avoid. In your mind, it appears from your question, you feel that a bar room brawl or operation of a copy machine on the ground is equal in complexity to a pilot living for long periods of time in his cockpit and making decisions at 500 mph. Not even a nuke power plant operator exists in such a confined unforgiving environment.
Let's take a different example. While not being trained in medicine, I can still foresee the "chilling effect" which a camera that has footage released to the lay public, could cause in the operating room. Surgeons would be reluctant to allow the new recruits to train and practice their art. Doctors would worry about malpractice documentation and not do what is safe but what is defensible in court. Rather than save patients lives ER personnel would be only worried about how their actions might look to a lay jury if a distraught family member got a hold of the camera footage and sued them.
End result?
Safety is thrown out the window in favor of face saving.
The camera is not the problem. The problem is that the only people qualified to view the footage are peers in the profession. Not politicians. Not Judges. Not Lay Juries. By the same token, I am not qualified to convict a surgeon for telling lewd jokes in the middle of a procedure to alleviate stress.
If we can not trust the video custodian, we cannot reduce the danger of more stress being placed into an already stressful work environment
These are my opinions only, and I don't speak for my colleagues here who might have different views.