Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

> Pilots have also opposed the move [to add 25 hr recording], with the union representing pilots for air-freight company Atlas Air telling the FAA the longer recordings would be an invasion of worker privacy.

> "(It) would significantly infringe upon the privacy rights of pilots and other flight crew members, as well as drastically increase the likelihood that CVR recordings will be misused or disseminated without authorization," the union said in a Dec. 28 response to the FAA's 25-hour proposal.

I'm not sure I agree that flight crews of passenger aircraft should have an expectation of privacy while flying planes. It seems like one of those kinds of jobs where the risks involved and need to gather forensic data in the event of an accident should outweigh the pilots' privacy concerns. Maybe add some regulation w.r.t. disseminating the recordings outside of releases by the NTSB as part of accident investigations.

    It seems like one of those kinds of jobs 
    where the risks involved and need to gather 
    forensic data in the event of an accident 
    should outweigh the pilots' privacy concerns

Reading between the lines, I think the concern is that pretty much any flight might contain minute violations of things like the "sterile flight deck rule"[1] and it would probably be easy to find a reason to fire any given pilot if airlines could just comb through endless amounts of recordings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_flight_deck_rule

If you're chitchatting in the cockpit and that causes things to get missed, that's very pertinent to the investigation. I don't care if that chitchat is about some sportsball banter, some personal info about relationships/work/etc, or anything. If you can't focus on the job while you're on the job, that's something that needs to be understood. So I'm very much in agreement that this privacy claim is nonsense when these "private" conversations directly affect the lives of 150+ passengers/crew. It's not like a couple of coders chatting away. Lives are not on the line.

Not chitchatting during takeoff, approach and landing is actually a requirement. It's called the sterile cockpit rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_flight_deck_rule

Weird how the "privacy heavy" EU manages to have 25 hr recording requirements...

Yea, weird how CVR recordings don't leak over there.

You could probably overcome the pilot objections if there were real penalties for misappropriating the recordings, like they have in the "privacy heavy EU". As it stands today, the pilot objections aren't really unreasonable.

Could it be encrypted with a key only the NTSB has?

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