Lawmakers press Google over Spirit Airlines worker data in bankruptcy asset sale

Over 100 US lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, have asked Google to impose tighter limits on employee data it acquired from Spirit Airlines, saying the privacy protections attached to the purchase are not sufficient.

Google won the rights to buy the data at auction in August and plans to use it to train artificial intelligence models. The sale is part of the wind-down of Spirit's bankruptcy, which has also included auctions of aircraft and real estate.

The dataset covers years of internal company emails and Microsoft Teams messages, payroll records and employee files, including crew scheduling information. A court-appointed privacy ombudsman has set conditions on how the material may be used to protect consumers, but flight attendants and pilots, speaking through their unions, have called that oversight insufficient.

The lawmakers want Google to shield sensitive worker information even after it has been de-identified, and to put systems in place that prevent the data from being re-linked to individuals. They also want as much of the employee material removed from the dataset as possible.

In their letter, the officials argued that employees currently receive weaker privacy protection than customers, even though Spirit gathered considerably more private information about its staff than about the people who bought tickets. The scale and sophistication of modern artificial intelligence, they added, make it especially important for privacy safeguards to keep up with the technology. A hearing on 14 October could decide whether the transaction goes ahead.