Citations and legal analysis
PJ2;
I thank you, sir. Thank you for the extensive quoted regulatory information and, as importantly if not more so, the extensive analysis of the underpinnings of the exclusion from legal process of the information in question.
(As a small preliminary item, my invocation of the word "statutorily" was meant merely to allow for the possibility that the legal mechanisms of exclusion were set forth in statutes, rather than the Federal Air Regulations (in the States), inasmuch as regulations, whilst having the force and effect of law (and receiving what is commonly known as "Chevron deference" in US courts), simply do not have the same legal throw-weight, if you will, as an act of Congress. I imagine that the gulf between administrative regulation on the one hand, and legislative enactments on the other, may exist similarly in other nations, but this would not be my field, and thus further comment, I shall not make.)
The analysis of exclusion from legal process of given classes or categories of information is one well-known in the law, at least in American law (as noted above, I hold no particular expertise elsewhere). Not only the privilege for communications between doctor and patient, or between priest and penitent, but indeed the privilege most hallowed in the law -- for communications between attorney and client -- all have their roots in the same general modality of analysis.
But as compared to those other privileges for non-disclosure and their genesis in the law and whatever we are to call the wellsprings from which developments in the law take place, there is another dimension here, to be sure, driven by the intensely deep state of knowledge one must have and hold in order to understand the complexities of the flight path (say) of a Triple 7 which might have been in FLCH mode with A/T armed but not on (until it was too late). These facts (if facts they are), a non-driver can recite, but there is much more to understanding the actual data, one would think, yes?
Certainly, if we are speaking of criminal law matters, I am not sure I can recall more than one instance in the States of an air carrier mishap from which criminal prosecutions took place. Maybe the Air Florida disaster in DC (failure of de-icing), but I don't think there were crimes charged. Or the - what was the name of that carrier - discounter out of Florida and the oxy cannisters ruptured in flight (DC-9, as I recall)....these are the only possible prosecution examples in the States that come to mind. Maybe I'm just not recalling.
And even more certainly, the plaintiffs' bar in the States will yell, scream, shout, make noise, and utter excitedly all manner of liberty, freedom and the rights of man, when it comes to suing someone who may be said to have caused a loss, especially a tragic one. Of course and it should be needless to say, the right to legal recompense is a bedrock of constitutional democracy. But it does not fit, and was not intended to be stretched so as to attempt to be fitted, to every loss.
I wish I had enough knowledge about the safety assurance process (a phrase which may do small justice only to the overall safety consciousness and the record it has yielded) you have so eruditely described in your recent posts, so as to discuss the process with some semblance of intelligence. Still I thank you for the informative and focused content.