In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about an unusual new smartphone app, Google’s continuing Street View troubles, Microsoft’s thoughts on data privacy legislation, and why it’s not a good idea to sue customers for bad online reviews.

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Facial Recognition App Reports Ratio of Men to Women at Bars and Clubs

Now here’s a novel use for facial recognition technology. Discover Magazine reports on a new start-up company called SceneTap, which uses cameras above the entrance to bars and clubs to scan the number of men and women entering the establishment. The ratio of men to women is then shared via a free smartphone app which points users to the nearest bar with the highest percentage of the opposite gender. The company promises that the video feed is not stored and that the camera isn’t sensitive enough to determine identity, but only if an individual is male or female.

Judge Denies Google’s Request to Dismiss Street View Lawsuit

While Google has had a mostly successful rollout of its new social network, Google+, the company is still dealing with old privacy mistakes. Bloomberg reports that “U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Francisco denied Google’s bid to dismiss claims that the data collection, which included e-mails, user names, passwords and other private data, violated federal wiretap laws.” According to the article, this class-action lawsuit is “the first in which a federal court is being asked to determine whether a company can be found liable under federal wiretap laws based on allegations that it intentionally intercepted data from a wireless home network.”

Microsoft Calls for Comprehensive Privacy Legislation

Microsoft, again proving that it is one of the more forward-thinking tech companies on the issue of privacy, has come out in full support of comprehensive privacy legislation. Recently, Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, argued that legislators are distracted by “flavor of the month” issues, saying, “Whenever you get technology-prescriptive in legislation, it gets out of date very quickly. It needs to be broader and comprehensive, backed up by self-regulation in industry.” Lynch is correct in his argument, particularly as it pertains to the issue of Do-Not-Track legislation. Many politicians in the United States are pushing for Do-Not-Track laws, but ignoring the far more dangerous issue of deep data mining.

Should You Sue a Customer for Defamation?

When a business owner gets a bad review online, he or she may think he has a legal case for defamation. However, as this Reuters article explains, proving defamation is very difficult and a lawsuit may do more harm than good. Quoting the article, “One thing is for certain: if your customer is simply expressing an opinion, or if what they are saying is simply true, a defamation lawsuit will fail.”