Google Photos is awesome, and I’m sad I’ll never use it.

I’m genuinely bummed about isolating myself from the latest software. It all looks like a lot of fun. And it’s all because I have what I think is a pretty mainstream desire: I don’t want unknown people and organizations to know everything about me.

I don’t even think Google will do anything bad with my photos, it’s just quite possible that my photos will be used by someone else, either through hack, warrant, or dragnet, to do something not in my best interest. Maybe not anytime soon, but at some point over the next 30 years? Who knows.

Existing corporate servers already know way more about me than I can remember myself. When I’m 50 years old, I won’t be able to remember where I was on May 31st, 2015 (my birthday), or what I did, but there’s a good chance that my day could be replayed through text messages, photos (mine and others in which I appear), security footage, emails, iPhone metadata, etc. In fact, the fidelity with which our whole lives can be played back to us is increasing mighty fast.

If I’m the one replaying my life, great. I want that app. If it’s an algorithm looking for a pattern in my behavior or implicating me in a crime, then I’m less stoked about that.

Right now the life that’s sitting on these servers probably looks OK. Normal, boring. Maybe an ill-advised joke here and there. But as times change, governments change, morality changes, will my actions or acquaintances become liabilities? Sure it’s paranoid, but whoever thinks they know what the world will look like in more than a few years is wrong.

It’s like giving a key to your apartment to your significant other, but you can never change the locks or take it back. Things are great now because you love each other, but what happens if you break up? What if it’s a bad break up? You can never move on from that relationship. It always has to be good or else you’re vulnerable. Or what if he or she sells the key? What if they get mugged? That’s the situation we’re all in right now when it comes to these companies and our private info. It’s out there, you just have to hope that it doesn’t fall into the hands of someone who wishes you harm.

We should all have the right to leave the past behind and move on with our lives.

The only way this won’t be an issue is if we live in a world without privacy. Where I’ve accepted that everyone will see my texts to my wife. Where everyone will be able to see footage of my bedroom and apartment and anywhere else my laptop has been, because hey, the NSA can turn on your camera without you knowing at any time.

So there’s probably already a lot of stuff about me indexed in the NSA servers, waiting for an algorithm or person to flag me in some investigation. But even if it’s all still silo’d between companies right now, there’s no reason to think it will remain that way. People are smart, they’ll figure it out.

So yeah, unfortunately I’m not ready to just throw up my hands in defeat and embrace the future. I really wish Google Photos ran on my own private server (still hackable but less likely to be caught up in a dragnet). It looks like a great app.