Google Wins Auction for Spirit Airlines Employee Data Amid Worker Concerns

Google recently won an auction to acquire a massive dataset from Spirit Airlines, which includes nearly all of the airline's employment and workplace records. The data does not include personal information or customer data but consists of approximately 100 million employee emails, HR information, payroll data, and data measuring employee behaviors, activity, and productivity.

The sale has raised concerns among former flight attendants who are worried that Google may use the data to identify individuals or small groups within Spirit Airlines. The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), a collective bargaining unit representing Spirit workers, argued in a court filing that Google's deal with Spirit debtors does not provide sufficient protection for employee confidentiality.

The AFA pointed out that consumer protection laws do not cover worker confidentiality, leaving a significant privacy loophole in the deal. They also expressed concern that despite Google's agreement to never intentionally re-identify anyone in the data, the company could potentially combine the worker data with other datasets to re-associate them with their Spirit data.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company is not interested in using the data to identify individuals connected to Spirit Airlines and that any data received will be rigorously scrubbed of personally identifiable information by a third party before receipt. However, the AFA remains concerned about the potential risks associated with this deal.