Here is a patch to be able to enter the password with a file. It would allow to do some scripting without passing it on the command line, while keeping a good security level.

Ex : gcp –passwordfile thefilecontainingthepassword.txt …

Below is a sample patch against 2.0.2 for gcp.

--- gcp.py.dist 2010-01-06 11:47:17.000000000 +0100
+++ gcp.py      2010-01-06 11:51:27.000000000 +0100
@@ -399,6 +399,8 @@
                                                help = 'copies documents to a sub-directory by owner name, if the directory doesn\'t exist it will be created')
        parser.add_option('-p', '--password', dest = 'password', 
                                                help = 'password to login to Google document servers, use with extreme caution, may be logged')
+       parser.add_option('', '--passwordfile', dest = 'passwordfile', 
+                                               help = 'name of file containing password to login to Google document servers, this file should obvisouly be read only by user')
        parser.add_option('-f', '--format', default = 'oo',
                                                help = 'file format to export documents to, ensure to use default if exporting mixed types (download only option)')
 
@@ -428,6 +430,9 @@
                to enter the password on the command line
        """
 
+       if options.passwordfile != None:
+               options.password = open(options.passwordfile, 'r').read().strip()
+
        if options.password == None: 
                options.password = getpass.getpass()

http://code.google.com/p/gdatacopier/issues/detail?id=44