Can individual employees at Goolag access my personal information?

Can individual employee at Google access my personal information?

Short answer: Not really, but no guarantees. Especially in the long term future.

Google photos is an awesome service. Go check it out if you don’t give one whit about your privacy. Google photos is free. And when the service is free as the axiom goes, you’re the product. It is scary how much sheer data Google and others collect and analyze about its users. As such, I did some research to find out just how protected is the information you share. I was a little concerned with some disgruntled employee at Google finding one my more embarrassing pictures and posting it online. So I did some research to assess the risk. Essentially the information is pretty restricted inside and outside the company. I have decided to use Google Photos because based on my opinion, and my current station in life, the benefits outweigh the costs and possible risk.

However here are the following scenarios in which your information could be exposed.

1. Law enforcement issues a subpoena. This could be the government trying to find you, OR it could be the government trying to find someone else, but you’re information is inadvertently accessed during the search, either by law enforcement or Google employees.
2. Apparently the odd engineer can see information here and there in order to do his job, but the procedures are tightly controlled and monitored. Also apparently any information accessed it not tied to a username (somehow?). Most employees cannot pull up someone’s information at will. And I highly doubt a random office drone would risk his job by stealing someone’s information, at least not mine anyway.
3. Sometime in the future (or now even) Google decides to do away with their privacy policy and do whatever they want. They say this will never happen, that you will never have your privacy decreased from what it is now. But considering that corporations are now rivaling governments in terms of power and wealth, losing your privacy and becoming an information slave to the Corporate-State is certainly possible.

Do with this what you will.