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Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

theregister.com

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Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#221

Post by anal_reactor »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #214
mariuolo wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got a really strange response over email which I clearly wasn't supposed to see. A representative from that airline was asking internally if they could put me on the no-fly list. That was really chilling. What if they only pretended to forward it to you by mistake and you /were/ supposed to see it? As in "it would be a shame if you could never fly again".

In the United States legal system, when you take a plea because the Government was threaning you with a 20 year sentence the judge requires in court and under oath for you to state that you were not coerced/pressured in any way to take the plea (because pleas wouldn't be valid if the Government pressured you into them and into signing away your rights). Before you push back at your work you have to consider possible…

> The entire US system is designed around baked in blackmail of the individual into conforming.

Back when I still argued with people on reddit I was shocked to learn that normies actually believe this is a good thing. Particular example was that the fact that so much of your life is tied to your workplace and you can get fired for political activity outside of your work. This shuts down any non-mainstream discussions. They were like "yes this is exactly what we want".

When I tried to explain "ok but there were times when racism and homophobia were the mainstream, do you think people advocating for equality should've lost their jobs for their political activity" I always got in response 502 Internal Server Error.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#222

Post by ryandrake »

prepend wrote: post #181
elric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully share your concerns. And I don't understand how apparently tons of Teams and email conversations can be archived and sold without any kind of scrutiny. How can such data be sold without the consent of all involved parties? What gives Google the right to use it to train LLMs? Is that just a way of washing away the legal protections?

Since it’s work communications, consent was already given. When you join a company, you typically sign an agreement that talks about how the company owns all your output. Thumbs upping a Teams message is work output and they own it. Every email sent and received. Every keystroke. Etc etc etc. If you don’t want your employer to log and sell it, start your own company. Or use a personal device. I do the latter.

That's not consent. It's a one-sided condition of employment. Consent would imply a meeting of the minds and a way for each employee to negotiate, or opt-out without losing employment.

It's like saying I consent to my phone company's 200 page long terms and conditions.

Corporate America has a very fucked up definition of consent, and they seem to have spread that definition broadly.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#224

Post by robhlt »

js2 wrote: post #10

> Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records. 600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the collection, along with 13.7 million active emails addresses from Oracle’s Resp…

None of that customer data is included in the purchase. Page 18 of the linked court document is the source of these record counts, and on the right is a "Google's Data Purchase Request" column that lists all of this "Customer Behavior" data as "not included".

The Register is not a serious publication and completely missed this. Other outlets reporting this story do not include the claim that customer data is included.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#225

Post by akoboldfrying »

flaburgan wrote: post #218
akoboldfrying wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically agree, but I'd also say: Every Gmail user has already accepted such a promise as sufficient.

But the Spirit customers may not have a Gmail or even a Google account? I personally don't.

Sure, a Spirit customer with no Gmail account can absolutely complain and/or be wary of this. I didn't mean what I wrote as a complete counterargument -- just trying to indicate the "scale" of the privacy issue here, which is that it's something that many people already tacitly accept.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#226

Post by qlte »

WarmWash wrote: post #183
hogs_get_fat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is even weirder. plenty of growth is possible but modern liberal democracy requires that all progress must be contingent on the production of enormous amounts of text that nobody would ever read. 3 years ago, the Wall Street journal covered a company trying to use AI to generate documents required for the approval of new nuclear reactor reactor designs, which sounds dangerous, until you get to the point where t…

Well that's why a plan can take years to be approved. There also is the liability angle, where no one necessarily reads the document until the document is relevant to some situation in the future. Then you better have that document on hand.

According to the article, the “application” (which I imagine was also broken down into smaller pieces as they went back and forth to regulators during the review process) was 12,000 pages in total.

The 2 million number is for “supporting” materials which isn’t really defined. It definitely makes for a better soundbite to claim millions.

  > its 12,000-page application had around two million pages of support materials.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#227

Post by mminer237 »

outside2344 wrote: post #154
alistairSH wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sitting here chuckling because you felt the need to post this. Your points are valid. And there probably are plenty of Americans who needed the correction. But still.

Honestly at this point it is usually the Europeans that need this (I have been asked if Chile has good tacos from a European). At least in my experience, most USians (in spanish Americans means everyone in the hemisphere) now know more about South America than the average European. (Which is to be expected, proximity and all)

We aren't speaking Spanish. "American" means a citizen of the USA in English.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#228

Post by dieortin »

hbn wrote: post #204
alistairSH wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sitting here chuckling because you felt the need to post this. Your points are valid. And there probably are plenty of Americans who needed the correction. But still.

Why are Americans in particular expected to know details about every country on Earth? Do you think Canadians know all these facts about Brazil? Do Indians? Or Swedes? It's only Americans that are smugly called ignorant for not knowing about the entire world.

Not details, but at least having a basic notion of where countries are located. Everyone should be expected to know, for example, that Mexico and Spain are two different countries that are located in different continents. Yet it’s always people from the same country referring to one by the name of the other.

https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/10/22/why...

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#229

Post by XenophileJKO »

xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

I got to the part where you declined the $100 and thought you declined it because you had gotten some memorable experiences and that was payment enough.

The story really didn't go the way I expected.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#230

Post by robhlt »

no-name-here wrote: post #91
xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

> If Google wanted to sell a product to the airlines that offered to keep annoying people like me from purchasing flights, they could do that with that email chain. I'm skeptical it'll be wiped correctly. Isn't my poor writing style basically my signature? The OP article is quite poor in terms of information provided, but the buyer (Google) had to explicitly agree not to attempt to re-identify users. https://www.axio…

The OP article is also wrong on multiple counts. "Customer behavior" data like call recordings and email addresses/activity is specifically not included in Google's purchase. See page 18 of the court document they link, the "Google's Data Purchase Request" column on the right lists what is and isn't included.
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