The Record reported that 114 members of Congress wrote on Thursday to the heads of Google and Spirit Airlines, asking them to drop a data deal. Google would pay Spirit $10 million for internal records to train AI models. Rep. Steven Horsford said the package has about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, plus contracts, staff and timecard records, and payroll and tax files. He and Sen. Elizabeth Warren led the letter.
Google has said it will receive no personally identifiable information, and a third party will scrub the data first. The Record reported that Spirit is defunct. Horsford's release says it announced a shutdown in May, and almost 1,000 Las Vegas staff lost jobs. The sources do not say whether the deal is signed or when it would close. Google had not replied to The Record.
Analysis: a name is only one clue to who wrote a message. Job role, writing style and timecard patterns can still point to a person, especially next to other datasets. A model trained on text may also repeat some of it. Former staff have no employer left to speak for them. Before selling or buying workforce data, ask what is scrubbed, who checks it, what uses are barred, and who audits.