Second suit over Lower Merion webcam snooping

The letter from Lower Merion school administrators delivered the news three weeks ago - her son had been secretly monitored by the webcam on his school-issued laptop. But only when Fatima Hasan saw the evidence did the scope of the spying on her son Jalil become apparent.

There were more than 1,000 images surreptitiously captured by the computer - 469 webcam photographs and 543 screen shots. All were evidence in the case against the Lower Merion School District and its now-abandoned electronic monitoring policy.

"I was really shocked. I didn't know what I was walking into," Fatima Hasan said Tuesday afternoon after her son, now 18, filed a civil lawsuit for invasion of privacy against the Lower Merion district and others. "They were all pictures of Jalil, and all Web shots from his laptop, and that's not an easy feeling."

The suit joins one filed in February by Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton High School, and for the first time draws in Lower Merion High School, where Jalil Hasan was a senior. For the high-achieving school district, the second civil suit raises the stakes in an already-costly legal fight.

The cases are similar in their broad outlines. The electronic monitoring began after school-issued computers were reported missing. In both cases, the system was simply left on long after the laptops were recovered. Hundreds of photos and screen shots were captured on a predetermined schedule.

The photos from Hasan's computer included shots of him in his bedroom and of other family members and friends. In a widely published photograph, Robbins, now 16, was shown sleeping on his bed.

According to the suit, Hasan forgot his computer in cooking class on Dec. 18, a Friday. A teacher turned it in to the technology department that day. On Dec. 21, Hasan retrieved his computer from the technology office.

At some point that day, school officials activated the security system. The system kept capturing images for nearly two months and was only deactivated after the first lawsuit was filed.

"When I saw these pictures, it really freaked me out," said Jalil Hasan, who will attend culinary school in California in the fall.

His mother said she could not understand why the tracking system was activated.

"What was it turned on for if you had [the computer] in your possession?" she asked. "It never left the school, so you could have clearly seen it."