Google won a bankruptcy auction to acquire a massive dataset from Spirit Airlines, including approximately 100 million employee emails and decades of HR, payroll, and productivity data. The dataset also contains computer programs, applications, and code. While Google agreed to use a court-appointed ombudsman to strip personally identifying information (PII) and pledged never to intentionally re-identify individuals, privacy concerns remain.

The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), representing Spirit workers, filed a court objection arguing that consumer protection laws used to justify the data scrubbing do not cover worker confidentiality. The AFA contends that de-identification protects against tracing records to named individuals but does not address whether the contents remain confidential. Sensitive employment information such as disciplinary records, training deficiencies, and internal communications stay vulnerable even after names are removed.

Google purchased the data for $10 million, outbidding competitors including Mercor Corporation. The tech giant stated it will not receive any personal information and will use the data to improve AI and other products. However, the AFA warns that combining the pseudonymized dataset with other Google data could still reveal information about identifiable individuals or small groups over the more than a decade of records.

Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed alarm over the sale, noting that using employee data for new purposes without consent raises significant concerns. The AFA's objection is limited and does not seek to disrupt the sale but urges stronger protections for worker data.