Sounds like old (overblown) news to me! (Score 2, Informative)

The funny thing is that there was another article that was on Slashdot a few months ago. It was titled "Google Aids Indian Goverment [sic] Censorship". Now in response, a Google spokesperson had said (quote via Boing Boing)

The reporting tool that was offered to authorities acts as a hotline to Google Inc., allowing the authorities to communicate requests for removal of content to us. The reporting tool does not give the police any privilege other than a speedier vehicle to notify Google Inc. about flagged users or communities. Authorities have no access to user data and can not remove content themselves by using this tool. The tool is not used to provide authorities with user information such as IP addresses. Google investigates reports received by the authorities via the reporting tool to determine whether a user or community has in fact violated orkut's terms of use. Authorities may use the reporting tool to ask Google to preserve user identifying information for a certain period of time (in anticipation of serving formal legal process for such information), and we will preserve the information accordingly. But no user data is turned over to the authorities absent valid legal process.

So what we seem to have now is another article that basically says the same thing as the first Slashdotted article. And from the Google statement, it appears that the "Priority Reporting Tool" is nothing but a glorified version of the "report abuse" link that every user gets on Orkut. Or did something change at Google in these past few weeks? Is this a new interpretation of the "valid legal process" that the Google spokesperson mentioned in her statement above?

(P.S: For all those of you who are wondering, Orkut is a (Google promoted) Friendster like social networking site that is very popular in the Indian subcontinent and in Brazil too. Recent surveys indicate that Orkut ranks 9th in terms of membership size, behind Myspace et. al.)