CVR in court - interesting dilemma

[newswatcher]

From AP(10/10):

"A federal courtroom should be closed to protect victims' privacy if prosecutors are allowed to play cockpit recordings at the trial of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, a pilots union says.

The Air Line Pilots Association told a judge Wednesday that public release of cockpit tapes and transcripts would violate a federal law designed to protect privacy in airline disasters. Moussaoui's twice-postponed trial is scheduled for June 30.

Prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema for permission to play recordings from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001, and a private jet that picked up the cockpit radio transmissions. Passengers on the United jetliner are credited with attacking the hijackers and preventing an attack on the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

Brinkema said in September she probably would reject the government's plan to play the recordings unless prosecutors could demonstrate they represented essential evidence.

The government has not asked that the trial be closed to the public while any tapes are played, but noted that federal law would prevent releasing the recordings outside the courtroom.

The pilots union went further by asking for the closed proceeding.

Any public release "would be contrary to the statutory protections ... instituted at ALPA's behest -- protections that were instituted to protect legitimate and sensitive privacy interests of pilots and the victims of aviation disasters and their families," the written pleading said.

The recorder from United Flight 93 was the only one recovered from the Sept. 11 attacks. The government has allowed relatives of the 40 passengers and crew who died to listen to the tapes in private sessions approved by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Normally tapes from the cockpit recorder, which record the final 30 minutes before a crash, are not played in public, although transcripts are usually released by investigators."

[stagger]

This issue was discussed at length some time ago in the following thread...

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=50518

It's not entirely clear why the prosecutors need to play the tapes. Did the hijackers perhaps say something audible that could help establish that Zacarias Moussaoui was a co-conspirator?

I would have thought that the prosecution could have just entered the transcripts into evidence. Then if the defence wanted to dispute some of the transcription details they could have perhaps insisted on the tape being heard - but I very much doubt that the defence would want the tape played in court.

[newswatcher]

Stagger, thanks for that reference, I didn't think to go back 6 months!

It may seem that there would be no difference between reading the transcripts, and hearing the actual recording. However, having recently sat on the jury at a murder trial, we had the transcripts and access to the police "covert" recordings. In some instances, the way that the words were spoken gave a fundamentally different meaning aurally, than visually.

It was made clear to us that the transcripts were incomplete, and represented what the prosecution and defence had agreed we should see. If we wanted to hear an excerpt, the defence could object to portions of the tape being played, but the judge had the final say.

[GlueBall]

Restricting evidence and restricting access to the general public in a Federal Court would be like rewriting the Constitution. ALPA is completely out of step on this one.

If our ALPA leaders still have a problem with CVRs, they had better catch up with the times, because recorded cockpit video comes next. And soon.
:eek:

[Wino]

Actually Glueball,
I think you are wrong, there are plenty of cases of closed courts where the witness or victim is being protected.

Furthermore, there are plenty of other secret courts where really odious things are done like wiretapping and bugging that are not open to the public either.

Don't be so sure that all that is coming either. If this gets out to open court and the families of the crews get to hear their husbands/fathers being murdered on the 6 oclock news, I think the CVR may be finished.

The increasing trend toward criminalization of aircraft accidents is already putting pressure to REMOVE cvrs.

Cheers
Wino

[RadarContact]

Restricting evidence and restricting access to the general public in a Federal Court would be like rewriting the Constitution. ALPA is completely out of step on this one.

If our ALPA leaders still have a problem with CVRs, they had better catch up with the times, because recorded cockpit video comes next. And soon.

And that is good, or what???
You sound like the type who would favour live video broadcast from the cockpit 24/7... :confused:

[GlueBall]

Wino ...correct, there is one secret Federal court with a panel of judges who deal with subjects as you had mentioned, primarily items dealing with clandestine investigations concerning national security. I was referring to the other 99% of Federal courts where public access cannot arbitrarily be banned; the exceptions include testimony involving classified information.

Radar... Miniturized video technology has become an inescapable part of every day life. It doesn't matter whether you're at an airport terminal, or in a hotel lobby, at an ATM machine, or at your favorite supermarket...Your face is recorded and stored in somebody's machine, and you don't have any control over the process.

Soon this technology will find its way into the cockpit, but in such a way as not to offend pilots. The video heads will be positioned only to show the instrument panels, pedestal and glareshield. At most, only a pilot's hands or arms will be recorded. It is a necessary modern day tool to help investigate airplane incidents and accidents.

Many moons ago AA had closed circuit TV in its DC-10 cockpits. Pax could watch takeoffs and landings at the Captain's discretion; pax could also select the VHF radio channel and listen to ATC. In that setup, the pilots were visible. It was a novelty as much as it was a marketing gig back then.

The SU990 B763 recovery and crash investigation cost US taxpayers 17 Million (The Egyptian government had payed an additional 5 Million), just to prove that there was no mechanical problem. Video cams could have recorded F/O Batouty's fingers as he had toggled the fuel ignition switches to the off position.

There are many transport category accidents and incidents where recorded video of instruments and switches could have shortened the investigative process in assigning a probable cause. As pilots, we need to know how to prevent incidents and accidents. That knowledge comes from thorough investigations with help from modern high tech tools.
:p

[Blacksheep]

Writing as one who has listened to the last moments in the lives of two professionals, I don't think it is fair to inflict such an experience on jurors or anyone else in a courtroom unless there is a compelling reason to do so. The transcripts are bad enough.

Leave CVR recordings to those who listen to them professionally; playing them in public is insulting to the victims and distressing to their families. Photographs of victims' injuries submitted in evidence are normally shown only to the judges and jurors and not made public. CVR Recordings should be treated in the same way as photographs, not used as political capital to stir up public emotions.

**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema

[RadarContact]

@Blacksheep: Amen...

@GlueBall: I'm not against improving safety or even the educational value of better accident analysis - but :

- Such data should at all times remain property of the subject being monitored

- It should not be made available to the public under any circumstance - especially not via the media!

- In favour of accident analysis it is absolutely sufficient that the investigators examine the data and a transcript or testimony is used in any public court.

I do know that there are cameras already almost anywhere, but then I'm on someone else's turf. I don't want people watching over my shoulder while I'm at home or at work. How do you safeguard the privacy of the involved? I mean in those 99% of the cases where there is absolutely nothing to investigate anyway... Who would have access to the recordings?
I don't want every weird little joke I tell to appear on some newspapers headline at some time...

[GlueBall]

Back in the 60s there was the big hullabaloo about CVRs. Today it's about cockpit videos. It will come to pass and everyone sooner or later will adapt and keep on flying.

The "front office" is not exactly a "private" area. We are held not only responsible, but held accountable to the safety of 100s of pax and a multimillion dollar airframe and engines. And when you accept this sort of job (and pay) you subject yourself to a much higher level of training, surveillance and overall scrutiny than a crane operator at a construction site.

And when 3 pilots with six eyeballs take off on a wrong runway, or when two pilots with 4 eyeballs fly into a mountain and kill many people and cause hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, and generate many more hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful death lawsuits, then many parties concerned have an intrinsic need to know why. But moreover, the flying public has a right to know why planes crash, so that each prospective pax can make a self satisfying decision whether to fly today, what airline to choose or not to choose or what airplane to choose or not to choose.

And when in the case of SQ006 or AA965 the probable cause was found to be gross pilots' error, then the cockpit activities and conversational facts cannot be kept very private anymore. Death, injury and property losses of such magnitude far outweigh any operating crew's privacy concerns in the cockpit.

At the end of every successful flight, the CVR conversations can easily be erased. Assuredly, future video cockpit systems will have that feature.

[arcniz]

Wino & Glueball:

Your points are well taken.

Perhaps an analogy with medical oversight is appropriate. Surely some barnstormers refused to bend (over) to the rules, but eventually such exams came to be the standard and some even think it is a good thing....

One way to put a threshold on indiscriminate distribution of cockpit video and audio is to record the original in a non-standard and/or encrypted format that cannot be reproduced without special equipment and codes. Control of these allows for a strict chain of accountability, at least. There's still no protection from damn fools and politicians, but unauthorized access won't happen without somebody's tail on the chopping board.