Transponder malfunction resulting in multiple RAs? "stop squawk" is there for a reason, though I'm not sure if it gets used much.
Look, let's be completely frank here: trying to proof airplanes against the flight crew is currently a very bad idea. It behooves us to leave overrides for everything ... because of the unknown unknowns.
It's like trying to prevent an administrator, who has root access, from running unlogged commands as root. "Best practice" in security currently insists on sudo everywhere, "for traceability". It's a battle I've fought every day for a decade, because it's idiotic. If someone has root, or physical access, one can gain full control without leaving an audit trail. You can't protect against root, nor should you. And you can't protect airplanes against pilots... nor should you. You should simply focus on putting only the most trustworthy people in positions of trust, and that's all there is to it.
In my career as systems administrator, I have never snooped on any users, nor have I ever abused my position of trust in any way. In my career as a pilot, I have never done anything bordering on unethical nor have I knowingly broken any aviation regulation. I would hold that attitude to be a minimum standard of performance for any position of trust, and I bet most people would agree.
(Complete tangent: The really interesting question is what happens when you take someone with an extremely high standard of ethics and force them into an ethical conflict between your standards and a higher set of standards... issuing unconstitutional/illegal orders, for example. Or Snowden, for another.)
-Fox
NB. Remember that the FAA recommends transponder operation at all times now after engine start... no more stby unless explicitly requested.
