This sent me down the rabbithole of learning how identifiable voiceprints are. As you might guess, the answer is "very", although to my surprise our voices change enough that recordings lose a great deal of fidelity over a few years.
Authentication on fixed phrases is reasonably accurate within a very few words, so at minimum it should be possible to associate "Hey Google" clips with regular users of Google Assistant voice control (i.e. "OK Google"). Identifying whether someone is present in a large dataset on open phrases is much harder, but a ~30s clip could do the job fairly consistently for anyone with access to a significant amount of voice data. And if this employee (who isn't directly working for Google) shared 'thousands' of clips with a news org, the cautious bet is that some other employee might share them with anyone willing to pay for the records.
Authentication on fixed phrases is reasonably accurate within a very few words, so at minimum it should be possible to associate "Hey Google" clips with regular users of Google Assistant voice control (i.e. "OK Google"). Identifying whether someone is present in a large dataset on open phrases is much harder, but a ~30s clip could do the job fairly consistently for anyone with access to a significant amount of voice data. And if this employee (who isn't directly working for Google) shared 'thousands' of clips with a news org, the cautious bet is that some other employee might share them with anyone willing to pay for the records.