Yes, the situation superficially resembles Cambridge Analytica, but there's a few differences here. People aren't building detailed dossiers of themselves on Google Drive like they were on Facebook, and Transmit is a client app that is honest, open and up-front about how it uses your data - to move it in and out of Google Drive.
To be clear, the problem with Cambridge Analytica was not Cambridge Analytica. The problem was - and still is - Facebook's habit of getting everyone to overshare and self-surveil. There needs to be some control and vetting over the apps that have access to your data but not so much that actually honest developers are quitting the game.
My guess is that Google just doesn't want third-party clients (you can't shove "AI" or "Investor Advertising" into it), so they're slowly turning up the heat by abusing the data scare.
A lot of people will have substantially more sensitive data in their chosen cloud storage system (whether Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, iCloud) than on Facebook or any other social network. For example documents like ID scans, financial records, and medical records are going to be commonplace.
It seems like if a nefarious actor built a seemingly helpful app that asked for Google Drive access and convinced some people to use it, they could do a lot worse than Cambridge Analytica.
My Facebook account is largely limited to information that’s already largely public. I imagine there are Google Drive accounts out there with tax returns, health records, background checks, etc in them.
Yes, this sucks that it puts road blocks for well meaning developers, but for the general public, it’s pretty hard to tell who is a well meaning developer and who isn’t. Also, inexperienced or careless well meaning developers can still accidentally put your data in a public internet facing DB.
To be clear, the problem with Cambridge Analytica was not Cambridge Analytica. The problem was - and still is - Facebook's habit of getting everyone to overshare and self-surveil. There needs to be some control and vetting over the apps that have access to your data but not so much that actually honest developers are quitting the game.
My guess is that Google just doesn't want third-party clients (you can't shove "AI" or "Investor Advertising" into it), so they're slowly turning up the heat by abusing the data scare.