A summary that I read was that the airline/airport has to have in place security that meets a set of standards that will be set down by the DHS. The standards appear to be both pre-checking of pax (TSA PreCheck/Global Entry) and better physical screening of devices. IFF the airline/airport does not meet those standards by their implementation date then pax electronics larger than a smart phone will be completely banned from that airline's aircraft or from all the aircraft from that airport. The EU said it is dangerous for these devices with their batteries to be put in the hold, DHS agreed and therefore they will not be allowed in the cabin -OR- the hold, they cannot travel.
I would suspect that crew electronics for work EFBs etc., would need to be catalogued in some way by the airline so they can be confirmed, and by definition the crews would have been 'pre-checked'.
The reason for the concern on electronics that I read was that multi-cell batteries were being modified to have only one or two cells operating and the other - up to 7 (?) cells could be explosive. And of course many tablet type 'laptops' have totally different battery layouts so 'turning them on' proves nothing.
I have had a set of 'academic papers' that were packed as a block examined as presumably the scanner showed them but the operator could not work out what it was. I think that may be the real reason for just riffling through pages not reading the content.
I am very frequent SLF whenever I am carrying _anything_ that might look strange on a scanner (e,g, Large can of coffee; beanbag base for a satnav) I put it in a separate plastic bag so it is easier for the scanner operators to sort out. It also shows that you are being overt about it and not trying to 'conceal' something of interest. So I would probably do the same with a pile of papers in the future.
The best security is knowing the individuals as with the El Al security screening. The problems come when everyone is given the same 'we think you may be a risk' screening and limits because of some idea of 'not being discriminatory'. This overloads the system and actually reduces security.