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Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

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

#241

Post by preg_match »

jefftk wrote: post #85
xrd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky, and perhaps it wasn't well stated, but the last paragraph I said I'm concerned about identification via my writing style. If they have my emails, they would have my writing style. It doesn't have to be tied to PII there, they can cross reference it with my blog. I'm speculating because I read that you can identify people by a few sentences of their writing. "Deidentification" seems really mur…

Reidentification via writing style is definitely possible, and I doubt the vendor will modify things in a way sufficient to handle that. But I think this is a place where we should apply bounded distrust: there are lots of places where we should distrust Google, but reidentifying people in an explicitly deidentified dataset isn't one of them.

The re-identification is done by ML, at which point it's basically undetectable. If you give all this day to, say, and LLM, and the LLM also has your blog, the identification is embedded in the weights.

I can ask "Tell me about Person A's experience with airlines" and it will tell me. Or I can ask more generally, "knowing your knowledge, derive a no-fly list", and then it's likely Person A will be on it.

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

#242

Post by mring33621 »

vkou wrote: post #182
girvo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that the scrutiny is in practice not sufficient, as usual in these cases.

The argument generally doesn't demonstrate that. The argument generally goes: 1. Google could do it. 2. 3. Therefore, Google is doing it! (Step 2 needs to be filled in a bit for it to be a good argument. Generally, analogies don't quite make the cut.)

You are ignoring the value of previous experience:

Please replace 'Google' with 'Profit-driven legal entity in the USA' and reread your argument.

The parent is making an assumption, based on past experience, but is also Most Likely correct.

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

#243

Post by dopamean »

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'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

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

#244

Post by wat10000 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #178
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 they could put me on the no-fly list. - ahhh, there seems to be different no-fly lists? The one Im aware of is the one for terrorists and moneylaunderers, and usually they will not tell you who put you on that list :-D

There is "the" no-fly list maintained by the government, which is nominally for people who are too dangerous to be allowed on an airplane, yet not dangerous enough to charge criminally.

But each airline also maintains their own internal no-fly list for people they prefer to no longer have as customers, for whatever reason. You might end up on this for some abuse of the system that doesn't pose any sort of safety risk, so the government doesn't care, but the airline doesn't like. For example, excessively doing hidden-city ticketing (where you book a flight with a connection, then skip the second leg of the trip, because weird pricing rules make it cheaper than just booking a ticket to the connecting city) can get you banned from the airline, but the government would be completely uninterested.

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

#245

Post by yourapostasy »

limagnolia wrote: post #108
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?

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…

This is when a track record of Google's "Don't be evil" motto, culture and corporate habits being literally front and center on its official code of conduct, instead of moved to the very last line in 2018, would have persuaded people to give it the benefit of the doubt. Functionally effective privacy seems to be retreating ever more exclusively into the domain of very wealthy families and behind the corporate veil (by purchasing information scrubbing services on a regular basis), and the loss by normal people of the commons of mass privacy has unfortunately not been appreciated by the common citizen. It is a more valuable commons than recognized by most citizens, and is being rapidly co-opted and monetized by commercial entities that are not aligned with individual interests.

Even as an investor who stands to benefit from that monetization in the short term, I stand against this trend because like any Tragedy of The Commons economic scenario, in the long term (which isn't that long due to the automation that harvests this resource) it sows the seeds of its own dilution into functionally near non-commercial value.

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

#246

Post by zer00eyz »

preg_match wrote: post #231
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Re: plea deals. Most people don't know that plea deals are very common. Over 90% of convictions come from plea deals. It's not just that lawyers are expensive and court is risky. Court also takes fucking forever . Somewhere along the way, a right to a speedy trial has been lost. People have jobs they have to get back to, families they have to provide for. The plea deal is often a way out right now, with the tradeoff…

This is one of those places where our failure to teach history and civics is failing the American people.

It's Adams defending British solders, and later being very much a supporter of the concept of jury nullification. The fact that the modern court has been allowed to not only block the distribution of this information, but actively seeks to tell jurors that they HAVE to follow the law is, to be blunt, a disgrace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

No more of this nonsense around "arbitration" being OK. Take it all to court, force it to be on the public record.

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

#247

Post by wat10000 »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #157
john_strinlai wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately "de-identified" data is typically re-identified quite trivially. so i guess we just hope google keeps its promise, and is competent in its scrubbing.

Explicitly trying to re-identify data that has been de-identified is typically a fireable offence at FAANG. Accidentally making a machine learning system that happens to (potentially) do it is a different matter.

Modern corporations have learned that the best way to do shady things is to make it very clear that such things are against policy and absolutely forbidden, and then to also make it very clear that breaking policy is the only way to actually get your job done. That way they still get all the benefits of doing shady stuff, and if it ever comes to light then they can fire some scapegoats and explain that this was against policy and they'd never ever condone it.

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

#248

Post by mrdependable »

budman1 wrote: post #72
Ekaros wrote: post #18

Anyone else somewhat weirded by current state of affairs that this sort of information is valuable enough to even bother selling... And that it actually happens... It feels like some societies are in really weird place.

How does this have value? Is any and every sentence in an e-mail considered 'fact' and thus to be fed into the AI? 90% of e-mails and Teams communications are inane. Polite banter, "thanks for taking care of that, I appreciate it" "please route the forms to Janet this week because Bill is on vacation" "unit will be un available until the parts come in" . I can't see the intrinsic fact value of this kind of communicat…

All the tech companies are trying to find data the others don’t have access to. That is one way they try to edge out the competition.

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

#249

Post by alistairSH »

mminer237 wrote: post #227
outside2344 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Esta página es de nivel internacional.

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

#250

Post by alistairSH »

mminer237 wrote: post #227
outside2344 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or maybe, more correct for this thread, "Esta página é de nível internacional."
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