Readit News[2] https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr2591/BILLS-119hr2591ih....
I'm not in aviation. But my between-the-lines straightforward reading is that unions see it as something with downsides (legal liability) but not much upside. It could be that there are a million tiny regulations that are known by everyone to be nonsensical, perhaps contradictory or just not in line with reality and it's basically impossible to be impeccably perfect if HD high fps video observation is done on them 24/7. Think about your own job and your boss's job or your home renovation work etc.
Theoretically they could say, ok, but the footage can only be used in case the plane crashes or something serious happens. Can't use it to detect minor deviations in the tiniest details. But we know that once the camera is there, there will be a push to scrutinize it all the time for everything. Next time there will be AI monitoring systems that check for alertness. Next time it will be checking for "psychological issues". Next time they will record and store it all and then when something happens, they will in hindsight point out some moment and sue the airline for not detecting that psychological cue and ban the pilot. It's a mess. If there's no footage, there's no such mess.
The truth is, you can't bring down the danger from human factors to absolute zero. It's exceedingly rare to have sabotage. In every human interaction, this can happen. The answer cannot be 24/7 full-blown totalitarian surveillance state on everyone. You'd have to prove that the danger from pilot is bigger than from any other occupation group. Should we also put bodycam on all medical doctors and record all surgeries and all interactions? It would help with malpractice cases. How about all teachers in school? To prevent child abuse. Etc. Etc.
Regulation is always in balance and in context of evidence possibilities and jurisprudence "reasonableness". If the interpretation is always to the letter and there is perfect surveillance, you need to adjust the rules to be actually realistic. If observation is hard and courts use common sense, rules can be more strict and stupid because "it looks good on paper".
You also have to think about potential abuses of footage. It would be an avenue for aircraft manufacturers, airlines, FAA, etc to push more blame on the pilots, because their side becomes more provable but the manufacturing side is not as much. You could then mandate camera video evidence for every maintenance task like with door plugs.
I wonder how the introduction of police body cam footage changed regulations of how police has to act. Along the lines of "hm, stuff on this footage is technically illegal but is clearly necessary, let's update the rules".
Hopefully other countries will start deploying recording systems or start forcing manufacturers of planes to have these integrated into cockpits.
Isn't that the price of a single H100?