Flight attendants freaked out that Google is buying tons of Spirit employee data
Bankrupt Spirit accused of selling out workers in massive data sale to Google.
Bankrupt Spirit accused of selling out workers in massive data sale to Google.
The short version
- Last Friday, Google won an auction to acquire a huge amount of Spirit Airlines data.
- The data doesn’t include personal information or customer data, but instead nearly covers the airline’s entire employment and workplace record.
- To ensure that no individual can be identified in the dataset, Google agreed to use a court-appointed ombudsman to oversee a process to strip any personally identifying information (PII) from the data before it’s transferred to Google.
What happened
Under the deal, Google agreed to maintain the data in this de-identified form and to never intentionally re-identify the data. And if Google sells access to the data, third parties would supposedly be bound by the same terms.
Why it matters
It may sound like a solid plan if you ever flew on Spirit Airlines and interacted with an employee by email or chat.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.