It is being scrutinized. The sale is overseen by the courts. Also, the media is scrutinizing. Also, PII has already been addressed by the court, from the article: "If you’ve flown Spirit and worry that Google will soon know about a testy conversation you had with the airline’s call center, you’re being told not to worry. The court filing says the data was deidentified before being put on sale and Google has promised to scrub any PII it finds in the trove."
reply"De-identified" data is trivially easy to re-identify, especially by google.
replyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/a-face-is-expo...
Sure, you can argue that its a bad deal, shouldn't be allowed period, etc. But that is a different argument than saying that there is no scrutiny.
replyI'm sure we can trust google to keep to their word and that we can trust a bankrupt airline to do their best at removing pii.
replyThe article claims it has already been removed, that Google is committing to remove anything leftover that they find.
replyYou can argue that its a bad deal, shouldn't be allowed period, etc. But that is a different argument than saying that there is no scrutiny.
Yes, the same google that has repeatedly, entirely "by accident", captured boatloads of wifi data with their wardriving vehicles (or google streetview or whatever it's called). They sure seem like a trustworthy bunch.
replyNot only those wardriving vehicles. They use everybody to scan the world's wifi networks. Well, except people like me who stubbornly turn off 'location accuracy' every time some app demands you turn it on.
replyI don't know exactly what gets sent to google, but it's certainly enough to identify and track (retrospectively) a huge part of the world's population.
Now I know you get tracked by the celltowers anyway, but still. Navigation works fine with the accuracy offered by just using GPS and it doesn't need all the wifi scanning, it's pure data harvesting.
Surely all this will take is asking the trained LLM to deidentify it lol
replyI prior worked at Google, I can say they DO de-anonymize data. You’d be foolish to think some PM within the company wouldn’t use this for malice. L
replyI'm sorry but such assurances are worthless without being explicit what was scrubbed and what is retained. An "anonymous" customer ID with a list of flights is very identifiable when you have other information about the trips someone has taken. PII is not a binary yes or no and even benign data can become a problem in aggregate.
replypinky promise?
replyMakes one appreciate living in place with sufficient constitutional protections against this sort of stuff. Even for work stuff selling this info wouldn't fly in some parts of the world.
replyIf you're referring to GDPR, companies routinely evade such protections using "informed consent" / "legitimate interests" loopholes. The big ones get caught once in a while, get a slap on the wrist and continue to do whatever they were doing before, albeit with more safeguards.
replyNot really: https://noyb.eu/en/fines-resulting-noyb-litigation
replySure 50 M or even 1 B might be peanuts for faang but still there is real progress.
Support Noyb at all costs
Not for nothing, but you have probably already consented. Typically user agreements allow for this kind of sale if you’ve authorized use and processing but YMMV.
replyThe party owning this data (Spirit Airlines) is consenting to the sale. Employees and customers of Spirit consented when they started employment and did business with Spirit, respectively.
replyThis is why the GDPR (and to a lesser extent the CCPA) is a good thing. The data was supplied for a specific purpose. The handler of the data should have to obtain further consent if they wish to use it for another purpose.
replyDid they consent? Just because one receives a letter it doesn't mean they “own” it, much less that they are entitled to publish it at their leisure. If Spirit were active in any country with GDPR-style laws, the seller of these data would be most likely investigated.
replyAmerica believes in freedom for large companies to take personal data and make it their own, rather than individual feeedom
replyIf this were a European company: That’s not how the GDPR works. You can only consent to specific purposes of using the data.
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replyIt’s called freedom. It’s triggering to many folks.
replyMass automated data collection and automated analysis are probably the biggest threat to freedom in the present day.
replyFunny, when I watch the news I see freedom being taken away by authoritarians, not people tracking who complains about window seats, or what pizza place you like best.
replyHow exactly do you think those authoritarians are identifying whose freedoms are to be taken away? Or do you think all of the datamining and Palantir contracts are for lolz? Two sides of the same coin.
replyWhy should corporations have the same rights and freedoms as human beings?
replyI think this is a far more important question than do you believe in right or left economic policy. idc, I want you to know, do you think a human’s rights, especially many humans together, outweigh that of non living entities like large tech companies.
> Why should corporations have the same rights and freedoms as human beings?
replyThey don’t.
Exactly. Corporations have more rights. Also immunity from any real consequences, but that's mostly an enforcement thing.
replyBecause corporations are just a group of people.
replySo corporations can go to prison then? Or do you think some groups of people should get a free liability shield without any restrictions that come with it?
replyIf it's "people all the way down", why do companies pay so much less tax?
replyWhat a load of crap. Your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. What's "triggering" is when it hits my nose.
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