Google's $10 million offer to acquire the internal data of bankrupt Spirit Airlines has raised pointed questions about who controls workplace records once an employer enters bankruptcy. More than 120 members of the US Congress are pressing for additional safeguards before a bankruptcy hearing scheduled for October 14.

What lawmakers want kept out of the deal

In a letter dated October 8, sent six days ahead of the scheduled hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Steven Horsford, joined by 119 co-signers, raised alarms about the impending sale, which reportedly includes approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, payroll and tax records, timecards, and employment contracts. Some of the documents may contain personal health information and employees' requests for workplace accommodations tied to health issues or disabilities. Nearly 1,000 Spirit employees have been laid off in Las Vegas.

"Spirit's workers handed over this information because their jobs required it, not so it could be sold to train a different company's AI," Horsford said.

The legislators are seeking to keep employee information out of the transaction wherever possible, to strip confidential safety reports from the sale, and to enforce restrictions on how the data may be used in the future.

Google says the data will be scrubbed first

"We are not looking to buy any personal information from Spirit," Google told Reuters. The company says identifying records will be "completely excluded" or independently de-identified.

Google beat Mercor's $7.5 million offer in August. Passenger databases covering 97 million customers were excluded, and Tonic.ai was hired to scrub the remaining material.

But court-appointed ombudsman Lucy Thomson's favorable review covered passengers, not employees. That distinction matters because the report emphasized passenger privacy rather than the confidentiality of employee records. US bankruptcy law requires privacy ombudsmen to evaluate "the potential losses or gains of privacy to consumers," but does not grant similar rights to employees. As a result, even a recommendation approving the sale would not mean concerns about the privacy of employees' data have been resolved.

Why stripping names may not be enough

In their letter, the legislators caution that AI technology can piece together fragmented bits of information to identify a person even after their name has been removed. Guidance from NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, sounds similar warnings about re-identification risks.

In a bankruptcy court filing, privacy organization EPIC stresses that de-identification is "not a magic wand" and may encourage employers to gather data that can later be sold off. France's data protection authority, CNIL, has issued guidance stating that AI systems may fall under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when personal data can be extracted using "means that are reasonably likely to be used."

The commercial pull behind corporate datasets

Grand View Research expects the AI training dataset market to grow from $3.9 billion in 2026 to $16.3 by 2033, an annual growth rate of 22.6%. That demand makes corporate records increasingly valuable, but privacy disputes could complicate future acquisitions.

Cryptopolitan previously reported that Meta retreated from employee mouse and keystroke tracking after staff likened the monitoring to "training your own replacement."

Union leader Sara Nelson says the Spirit case carries "tremendous implications for workers across the economy." The October 14 decision could help shape how bankruptcy courts handle workplace data in the AI era.