Unions for former Spirit Airlines employees dropped their objections to Google’s $10 million purchase of the defunct airline’s data, which Google plans to use to improve its AI models, after reaching a deal that keeps workers’ drug and alcohol test results, medical and disability history, and payroll records out of the sale. Google also agreed to a stricter process for stripping identifying details from the data and is barred from trying to reidentify anyone, according to the Association of Flight Attendants, whose president Sara Nelson called worker data privacy “a whole new worker’s rights issue.” That deal closes the gap left by the court’s privacy ombudsman, who backed the sale in October after Spirit’s 97 million customer records were excluded but didn’t review the risks to employees.
