Spied-on student files law suit

PHILADELPHIA, July 29 (UPI) -- A student says he is suing a Montgomery County, Pa., school district for privacy invasion arising from images captured by software in school-issued computers.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Jalil Hasan, 18, against the Lower Merion School District alleges the "TheftTrack" software installed on the Apple MacBooks issued by the high school to him and 2,300 other students illegally captured private images of his family inside their Ardmore home, the Philadelphia Daily News reported Wednesday.

"When I saw those pictures, it really freaked me out," Hasan said.

Hasan alleges for nearly two months, the laptop secretly recorded his online activity and captured 469 webcam pictures between Dec. 21 and Feb. 18, and another 543 screen shots were stored on the school district's servers, the Daily News said.

"Pictures of him at home in his bedroom, pictures of family, pictures of friends," mother Fatima Hasan said.

Lower Merion School District officials say the TheftTrack program, which is no longer in use, was supposed to have been activated only when a laptop was reported lost or stolen.

Hasan is represented by attorney Mark Haltzman, who is also handling the case of Blake Robbins whose family filed the first privacy law suit connected to the TheftTrack computer incident on Feb. 18, the Daily News said.

"There is no evidence that any students were intentionally targeted," Superintendent Christopher McGinley said. "Continued litigation is clearly not the right way to proceed and not in the best interest of the students or the school district community."

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

All rights reserved.