It seems that you can’t turn around lately without hearing about another alarming invasion of your privacy on a mobile device. Copied address books, stolen SMS messages, and location tracking are apparently par for the course. The latest uproar is over Google’s Android operating system and the way it protects, or rather doesn’t protect your pictures. How could Google have missed this after four years of working on Android? They didn’t; Android manages your snapshots just like every other device you’ve ever owned.

So why all the criticism? When you take a picture on an Android device, that image is saved to the SD card, or user-accessible internal storage if the device lacks an SD card. This is a regular folder that all apps are free to index. Because of this, it could be said that Android allows apps access to your pictures, but that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Android includes a permission system used to restrict apps to certain actions, but reading from the file system isn’t one of them. Only writing to the SD card requires a permission check. By going this route, Android can have a real file system wherein you can save content and manage files the way you want. There are a huge number of apps that benefit from this more open model, and consequently offer you more functionality. Gallery replacements, camera apps, alarms, ringtone editors, and even Dropbox with its new photo upload feature; anything that uses files from your SD card relies on this system.

Android’s file system is just like the one used to store files on a Windows or Mac computer, or even a standalone camera. Because Android is using a FAT file system there are few alternatives to managing access rights on folders outside the restricted system partition. You don’t see the gnashing of teeth over the innate insecurity of file systems on shiny new computers, do you?

Unfortunately, all the focus on mobile security has Google issuing knee-jerk reaction PR statements. After being contacted about this story, Google told the New York Times, “… we’re taking another look at this and considering adding a permission for apps to access images.” That would mean a change in the way Android saves your images, and it could actually make it harder for you to manage your own files.

This would almost certainly have to be a fundamental change in the way Android manages files. An encrypted photo directory would limit your ability to move files onto and off of the device. It would also mean requiring a new permission, thus breaking a huge number of apps that rely on access to the SD card but don’t already declare the write access permission. Most of the millions of Android devices in use wouldn’t even get the mild security benefits of new photo protections. A change in the way the file system works would have to come in a new version of Android, which as we know can take months to roll out to old devices.

Google is not Apple, but so many mainstream reporters seem to want to hold Android to the same standards as iOS. Google chose a more open model for storing files that enables developers more freedom. Instead of obfuscating the file system behind a simplified interface, Google lets you decide. Just because we’re talking about a mobile device, doesn’t mean everything on it needs to be locked down and encrypted. That’s not a better way to do things — it’s just a different way.

Read our guide on how to secure your iPhone or Android device