[shadowgovt]

I don't think they see this as an egregious abuse of power. Googlers trust Google to do a pretty decent job of securing private information almost all of the time; this isn't an area of moral concern for them.

(i.e. the question in their minds is "Is the data safer in the source repositories?" And it's probably not).

[JohnFen]

The problem is that Googlers (like far too many tech companies) view data as being secure if outsiders can't get access to it. They don't count access by themselves as a security issue, even though it objectively is.

[smueller1234]

Googler here. I don't speak for Google and obviously shouldn't and won't divulge internals, but this just makes me cringe so hard: unauthorized or illegitimate access by staff is OBVIOUSLY treated as a security issue. I'm kind of shocked that folks would think otherwise.

[JohnFen]

Just to clarify, I was not referring to unauthorized or illegitimate access. I was referring to company-sanctioned access.