Spirit privacy ombudsman backs $10M sale of deidentified passenger data to Google
Consumer privacy ombudsman Lucy Thomson recommended in a 5 October report that Spirit Airlines be allowed to sell deidentified passenger data to Google, which won the auction with a $10m bid, according to Business Insider. The new report says booking and transaction records, refunds, inflight purchases and WiFi sales are excluded from the deal and will not reach Google "in any form"; Spirit has hired Tonic.ai to deidentify the remaining unstructured data, including corporate email that may hold personal details. A court hearing on the sale is set for 14 October, and the court has the final say. Google has said it is not buying personal information and that the data would help improve its products and AI models.
The case shows bankruptcy asset sales becoming a route to AI training data, and the privacy guardrails courts are starting to demand.
The privacy official in Spirit Airlines’ bankruptcy has recommended approval of the sale of deidentified Spirit Airlines data to Google. In a report filed on 5 October, ombudsman Lucy Thomson said Spirit and Google had taken passenger databases out of the deal.
Google won the auction with a $10m bid, Business Insider reported. A hearing on the sale is scheduled for 14 October. The court has the final say.