Schools

Lower Merion School District Calls Ex-Student's New Laptop Lawsuit "A Complete Waste Of Tax Dollars"

The suit, filed this week, is the third such civil suit against the district.

A third lawsuit was filed against Lower Merion School District this week in connection with controversial webcam privacy issues surrounding school-issued laptops.

Joshua Levin, now of Spruce Street in Philadelphia, was a Harriton High School student and a minor at the time he alleges he was spied on. Levin was issued a personal laptop computer with a webcam as part of the district’s one-to-one laptop program for high school students.

“Unbeknownst to plaintiff, and without his authorization, defendants had been spying on the activities of plaintiff by defendants’ indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the school district,” the suit states.

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According to the suit, Levin kept the laptop in his bedroom as well as through the households of his mother and of his father. Levin’s younger brother noticed the camera light would go on and off and wondered if his family was being “spied on.” Levin’s mother said the idea was “absurd,” and his father said he believed the light meant the laptop was “charging,” according to the complaint.

“Unfortunately, this suspicion on the part of the Plaintiff’s younger brother was not a ‘fantasy,’ but was shockingly correct,” the complaint states.

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The district responded with a written statement Wednesday.

“The [Lower Merion School] District views this lawsuit by a 2009 graduate as solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of tax dollars,” according to a district statement in regard to the most recent filing. “The former student’s computer was one of six that were stolen from school property in 2008 and eventually recovered by the Lower Merion police. No Lower Merion School District employee ever viewed the images recorded on the stolen laptop.

“The District has repeatedly attempted to be fair and reasonable in this matter,” according to the statement. “Regrettably, the Plaintiff has flatly refused all efforts to achieve resolution through court-supervised mediation.”

The complaint states that Levin’s parents and Levin received a June 8, 2010 letter from the school district’s counsel, Henry E. Hockeimer, that said an investigation revealed 4,404 webcam photographs and 3,978 screenshots, taken between September 22, 2008 to March 12, 2009, were recovered from Levin’s laptop.

“Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,” the complaint reads.

This civil suit, filed Tuesday, June 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, comes nearly eight months after the first two civil suits were settled.

Blake Robbins, the Harriton High School student who brought the original lawsuit against the school district, alleged that the district inappropriately used a theft-tracking feature on school-issued laptops to monitor the activities of district students, received a $175,000 in October. Jalil Hassan, the Lower Merion High School student who brought a second suit against the district, received $10,000. Robbins and Hassan, who were both represented by Mark Haltzman, also received $425,000 for their counsel.

The district’s insurance provider, Graphic Arts, agreed in a separate settlement in October 2010 to cover more than $1.2 million in legal fees accumulated as a result of the litigation in those two cases.

Levin’s attorney, Norman Perlberger, could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.


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