I have a drawing of the A330 side stick controller showing the guts of it. Its a pretty beefy unit. I don't think it will flop around too much. I don't have anyway of posting it but if anyone wants to do so, I'll send it to them.
Here's something about ACARS messages. I was sitting on an A320 the other day. It was on overhaul and some testing was being done on it. The system under test failed and within seconds we got a message that the failure had been transmitted.
I would bet that alot of people here probably just learned that fault messages are transmitted on ACARS. Remember that the primary reason for doing so is to give advance warning of system faults so that maintenance personnel can prepare for troubleshooting and repair. This is especially useful during short turnarounds. There is no need for Lat/Long info and there is no information that would be hidden by Air France or Airbus.