A Mac user from Philadelphia has been imprisoned for 17 months for refusing to provide passwords for decrypting two hard drives.

A former police officer from Philadelphia, Francis Rawls, has been in prison for almost a year and a half, and is likely to stay there for a long time if he does not agree to provide access to the contents of the storage devices he has seized. The police suspect that he has pictures that contain scenes of sexual abuse of children.

What is characteristic is that no charges have been brought against the former law enforcement officer in the possession of child pornography. His fault lies precisely in disobeying the court. Under US law, an American will be held in custody for an indefinite amount of time until he submits to the court's request, indicated in the warrant.

The case against Francis Rawls began in 2015: the police then seized two iPhone smartphones, a Mac Pro computer, a Western Digital My Book external hard drive for Mac, a Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo drive and received a warrant to check their contents. However, all storage devices were encrypted using Apple's FileVault technology, and the defendant refused to provide the required passwords.

The authorities got access to the Mac Pro using the recovery key from the iPhone 5s, which belonged to the detainee, but did not find anything suspicious. To study the contents of hard drives encrypted by the Apple FileVault program, law enforcement officers failed.

The court ordered the suspect to provide access to the data, but Francis Rawls said he forgot the security keys, and also referred to the right not to testify against himself. Nevertheless, some evidence against him is still available: his sister reported that she saw on his computer images of child pornography.

The authorities are trying to get suspect passwords for decrypting hard disks based on the law "On All Writs and Orders of the Courts" (1789). It was this law that the US Department of Justice tried to apply to Apple in the case of the iPhone unlocking a terrorist from San Bernardino.

According to lawyer Rawls, the authorities violate the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, according to which a person accused of a crime should not be forced to testify against himself. However, the court ruled to leave Francis Rawls in jail until he agreed to grant access to the contents of the hard drives.