Google's $10 Million Data Deal Sparks Employee Privacy Concerns

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) has filed an objection to Google's $10 million purchase of Spirit Airlines' internal data, which includes employee emails. The union argues that the privacy protections attached to the deal do not adequately cover sensitive information.

The transaction includes approximately 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, along with spreadsheets, calendars, software code, and other internal business records. Google claims it will not receive any personal identifying information from this dataset and has stated that any data received through the sale will be de-identified by a third party.

However, the AFA-CWA is concerned that the data protections applied to the auction only address consumer data and do not specifically cover employee confidentiality. The union also worries that the 'deidentification' process might still preserve referential integrity across the data set, allowing confidential records to be followed.