Second suit filed in Lower Merion spycam case

Nearly six months after a Lower Merion family made national news with a claim a school-issued laptop had been used to spy on them, a second suit has been filed against the school district over alleged webcam surveillance.

Jalil Hasan, who graduated from Lower Merion High School this spring, said in a suit filed today that the school district activated remote-tracking software after he left the laptop at school Dec. 18.

A teacher found the computer the same day and turned it over to the school's IT department. The tracking system was turned on Dec. 21, the same day that Hasan retrieved the computer.

The suit alleges that the surveillance software remained activated for about two months.

In that time, the suit alleges, the district snapped more than 1,000 images - 469 pictures from the school-issued MacBook's webcam and 543 screen shots. Hasan, the suit says, did not learn about the surreptitious photos until he got a letter from an attorney for the school district July 8.

At their attorney's office, Fatima Hasan, the mother of Jalil, said she had been taken aback when she saw the hundreds of webcam-captured pictures of her son and home. She had expected to see perhaps a handful of pictures on her trip to the school district office earlier this month, but was instead shown far more in a DVD presentation.

"I feel very violated," Fatima Hasan said this afternoon. "I feel like my privacy has been violated."

The lawsuit is being handled by attorney Mark S. Haltzman, who also represents the family that filed the original webcam lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District in February.

In that suit, Harriton High School student Blake J. Robbins, 16, and his family claimed the district violated their right to privacy by taking pictures inside their Penn Valley home using the camera of Robbins' school-issued laptop.

The school district has said its security policy included remotely activating tracking software and cameras on the 2,300 Apple McBooks given to students. That practice has been halted and the school board is currently weighing new rules. The two Lower Merion staffers who had the authority to activate the remote monitoring are on administrative leave.

According to the most recent estimates, the webcam controversy has resulted in $1.2 million in legal bills and related costs.

Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., who represents Lower Merion School District in the original webcam case, said he would not comment.