United States Government Wants to Imprison Suspects Indefinitely, Who Refuse to comply with Decryption Order

It has emerged that the United States government is seeking to detain suspects indefinitely, who refuse to comply with court orders to decrypt their devices in order for investigators to have access to it content.

A Philadelphia ex-police sergeant, Francis Rawls, who is suspected of engaging in child pornography, has been in detention for the past seven months without trial for refusing to comply with a court order that said he should unlock two of his hard drives for investigators to have access to them.

The court charged him with contempt of court. Rawls is being held at Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center after been relieved of his duties.

On Monday May 16, 2016, Rawls was back in court. Federal prosecutors urged a Philadelphia appeals court to keep Mr Rawls behind bars until he agrees to unlock the hard drives.

According to the account of the story, investigators alleged that Rawls has been engaging in child pornography. Investigators said that evidence of his crimes is on his two drives encrypted with Apple’s FileVault software. They, therefore, demanded that he unlock the devices for them.

Although he has not been formally charged with the crime, a federal magistrate ruled that he is to be imprisoned “until such time that he fully complies” with the decryption order.

The Rawls’ attorney, Federal Public Defender-Keith Donoghue argued before the appeals court that his client be released immediately from prison; that he is being “held without charges,” and that it is a gross violation of Rawls’ Fifth Amendment right.

But investigators insisted that child pornography is on the two drives, and that Rawls’ sister has even seen some of the videos. Investigators also revealed that the drives are connected to a Mac Pro computer.

Ars Technica reports that forensic examination of Rawls’ Mac Pro computer revealed that he had installed a virtual machine – software that emulates a separate computer within his computer. Within the virtual machine, investigators allegedly found one image of what appeared to be a 14-year-old child wearing a bathing suit and posing in a sexually suggestive position. It was also alleged that there were log files that indicated that Rawls had visited groups titled: “toddler_cp,” “lolicam,” “hussy,” “child models – girls,” “pedomom,” “tor- childporn,” and “pthc;” terms that are commonly used in child exploitation.

Again, investigators claimed that they found Freenet, a peer-to-peer file sharing program used by Rawls to obtain child pornography from other users, had been installed within the virtual machine. They also revealed that Rawls accessed or attempted to access more than 20,000 files with file names consistent with obvious child pornography, and that he used the external hard drives seized by Delaware County detectives to access and store the images.

“This is not a fishing expedition on the part of the government. In fact, Rawls had multiple layers of password protection on his devices, and he always entered his passcodes for all of his devices from memory. Doe never had any trouble remembering his passcodes other than when compelled to do so by the federal court, never hesitated when entering the passcodes, and never failed to gain entry on his first attempt,” prosecutors told the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals of Philadelphia.

Activists who think the government is waging a needless war on encryption by keeping a man behind bar without charge, said the government cited a 1789 law known as the All Writs Act to compel Rawls to decrypt. It is said the All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Department used in its legal battle with Apple, in which a magistrate judge ordered Apple to produce code to enable the FBI to decrypt the iPhone used by one of two shooters who killed 14 people at a San Bernardino County in 2015.

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