Congress demands privacy rules in Spirit data deal

More than 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have requested additional privacy protections for former Spirit Airlines employees. The lawmakers are responding to a $10 million auction in which Google secured rights to internal business data from the bankrupt carrier.

The data set includes 100 million emails and 500 million workplace messages, along with spreadsheets and calendars. Spirit filed for bankruptcy, and this data sale is part of that legal process. The acquisition has prompted concerns about how employee information is handled during the transaction.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, represents the flight attendants involved. She stated that workers were not responsible for the airline's closure. Nelson expressed concern that employees could be identified even after their names are removed from the records.

“AI is a fast-growing industry that is completely unregulated. So, as we started delving into this issue, we found that there were no protections on the books for employees,” Nelson said. “And this is really only data that became valuable in the age of AI in order to train models to replace jobs and commodify other portions of working in a work environment. And our members should not be on the tip of the spear of that.”

Nelson noted that data security experts advise there is no reliable method to de-identify information when a connected workflow remains. She argued that this makes it easy to determine who the sensitive information belongs to. The union seeks to protect its members from this re-identification risk.

In a letter to Google and Spirit, the lawmakers warned that de-identified information can sometimes be re-identified. They requested that payroll records, timecards, and certain employee communications be excluded from the sale. The group also asked for limits on how the data can be used.

Google said in a statement that it is acquiring an enterprise dataset to improve its products and AI models. The company stated it is not buying personal information. Google said the information will be completely excluded or de-identified by an independent third party before the data reaches the company. Spirit representatives declined an on-camera interview. A spokesperson for Spirit said the company cannot explain why Google seeks the data set and referred questions about potential use to Google.