Lawmakers Challenge Google's $10M Bid for Spirit Airlines Data Over Worker Privacy

More than 120 US lawmakers raised concerns Thursday about Alphabet's Google unit acquiring defunct Spirit Airlines' internal data for $10 million to train artificial intelligence systems, citing employee privacy risks. Google won an August auction for Spirit data including spreadsheets, calendars, marketing and operations records as part of the carrier's liquidation. Spirit halted operations in May. The lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Steven Horsford, said the sale would include 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and other employee records, and urged Google to exclude employee information "to the greatest extent possible." A privacy ombudsman on Monday recommended a US bankruptcy judge approve the deal at an October 14 hearing after excluding personal information from 97 million Spirit customers. Google said it is not buying personal information and that data will be excluded or de-identified by an independent third party. The FAA this week approved the $58.5 million sale of Spirit's LaGuardia slots to JetBlue.