By Tom Leithauser
Publication Date: 2026-10-10 00:00:00
Google LLC’s proposed $10 million purchase of the assets of bankrupt Spirit Airlines—mainly to obtain data to train AI (artificial intelligence)—has prompted warnings from lawmakers and labor unions about the threat to former Spirit employees’ privacy.
“This sale presents uncharted territory. According to publicly available court findings, the proposed sale would involve an extraordinary volume of Spirit’s internal records, including approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, employee records, timecard records, payroll and tax information, and employment contracts,” 121 members of Congress said yesterday in a letter to the chief executive officers of Google and Spirit.
“While we understand that Google has stated that it will not receive personally identifiable information and that the data will undergo third-party scrubbing before its transfer, we are concerned that conventional de-identification safeguards may not be…
