A Philadelphia police sergeant was suspended Tuesday with intent to dismiss after federal authorities jailed him for refusing to hand over unencrypted files stored on his personal computers. 
 
 Francis "Phlash" Rawls, 36, was remanded to the Federal Detention Center on Monday after being found in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Rueter. 
 
 Rawls is a 17-year-veteran most recently assigned to the 16th District. 
 
 It's unclear what government officials are seeking on the computers. Rawls has not been charged with a crime, according to authorities. 
 
 On July 29, federal investigators obtained a search warrant for "certain electronic media" belonging to Rawls. The files were stored on Rawls’ Apple Mac Pro computer, his iPhone, and four external hard drives, according to court filings. The machines previously had been seized in Delaware Co. and Philadelphia. 
 
 On Aug. 27, Rawls was ordered to unlock the files on the machines. Rawls, who has an apartment in Chester, appeared at the Delaware Co. District Attorney's office on Sept. 4 where he decrypted "some of the media," according to Rueter's order, but did not unlock the hard drives. 
 
 After the Philadelphia Police found Rawls’ actions to be “conduct unbecoming,” Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey suspended Rawls for 30 days with intent to dismiss. 
 
 Contact Sam Wood at 215-854-2796 or samwood@phillynews.com. Follow @samwoodiii on Twitter. 
 
 Contact the Breaking News Desk at 215-854-2443; BreakingNewsDesk@philly.com. Follow @phillydotcom on Twitter. 

 Sgt Francis Rawls Image: Philadelphia Police Department 
 
 Former Philadelphia Police Sergeant Francis Rawls has spent the past seven months in solitary confinement without charges because passwords he entered for investigators failed to decrypt hard drives seized in connection with a child porn investigation. 
 
 For failure to cooperate with the investigation, Rawls has been locked up. He spends 22 and a half hours a day in his cell. If he gets a visitor, there must always be a barrier between them. He gets just one fifteen minute phone call a month. According to a person familiar with the case, Rawls is being held in solitary confinement due to his status as a former Police sergeant and fears for his safety. 
 
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 Rawls is suspected of possessing child pornography but, in an appeal filed in federal court yesterday, his defense outlines why he should be released. Referred to as John Doe in the court documents, Rawls has a clean record and doesn’t know the passwords prosecutors are looking for, the defense argues. He also doesn’t have to unlock his computer because of his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself. 
 
 The case began over a year ago in early 2015, when a team of investigators working out of the Office of the District Attorney for Delaware County, Pennsylvania, were conducting surveillance on the “Freenet.” Similar to Tor, Freenet allows users to anonymize themselves and access what’s called “freesites,” or sites that aren’t available on the web you and I are familiar with. Following the surveillance on Freenet, local and federal law enforcement agents received a warrant, and raided Rawls’ home on March 30th, 2015, seizing an Apple Mac Pro computer, a Mac Mini, an iPhone 6, and two external hard drives. Whether the surveillance was connected to the raid was unclear, and it’s also unclear whether other people were raided as well. 
 
 As the warrant was being executed, officers visited Rawls at work. Rawls told those officers he had “encryption on his computer” and refused to supply them with a password. 
 
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 In June, investigators obtained an order compelling Rawls to turn over passwords to some of his encrypted devices. A judge later found that order to be unconstitutional, writing Rawls “has properly invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when indicating that he would neither perform the act of decrypting the electronic devices, seized by the Commonwealth, nor provide the passwords to the Grand Jury for the electronic devices.” 
 
 Following that judge’s ruling, investigators then went to federal court, where they used The All Writs Act—the same law the Department of Justice recently used against Apple to try to force the company to unlock an iPhone—to compel Rawls to turn over his encryption keys. 
 
 The court ordered him to go to a district attorney’s office where he was instructed to enter the device encryption passwords. There, Rawls was able to unlock his iPhone 6 and an encryption application on the phone, but he told investigators he didn’t remember the passwords to the encrypted hard drives. 
 
 On October 5th 2015, a judge ordered Rawls to be “remanded to the custody of the United States Marshals to be incarcerated until such time that he fully complies with the order to provide his encryption passwords to investigators.” In other words, the judge ordered Rawls locked up until he gave up. Days later, Rawls was fired from the police force for “conduct unbecoming of a police officer.” 
 
 Rawls’ is currently in legal limbo while his public defender is fighting to get him out of solitary confinement as the case proceeds. 
 
 “Being forced to decrypt or provide your password is a violation of your fifth amendment rights because it’s a testimonial act which is what the fifth amendment protects against,” Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Gizmodo. “If you’re asked to turn over incriminating files, that reveals the contents of your mind because you have to then identify what you consider to be incriminating and that violates your fifth amendment rights.” 
 
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 A federal court has previously ruled that compelled forfeiture of encryption passwords is unconstitutional: In 2012, the 11th circuit court reversed an order that would compel a Jon Doe to give up their encryption passwords on hard drives that investigators suspected contained child pornography. 
 
 For now, though, Rawls will have to wait for the government to respond to his appeal, and he will continue to be held in solitary confinement even though he hasn’t been charged with a crime. 
 
 Rawls Defense Brief
– A former Philadelphia cop has been held in solitary confinement for seven months as part of a child porn investigation, but his case is unusual in that no charges have been filed against him yet. As Gizmodo reports, law enforcement officials raided Francis Rawls' home last year and seized an Apple computer, a Mac Mini, an iPhone, and external hard drives. Rawls told officers his devices were encrypted, but he wouldn't give up the passwords. When he was ordered to do so in federal court, the 17-year veteran decrypted some of the devices, per Philly.com, but said he couldn't remember the codes for the hard drives. A judge then ordered Rawls held in custody "until such time that he fully complies with the order." He was fired for "conduct unbecoming of a police officer" and now spends 22.5 hours a day in a cell and gets one 15-minute phone call per month. In an appeal filed Tuesday, Rawls' lawyers say that even if Rawls could remember the passwords, he shouldn't have to reveal them because of his right against self-incrimination. "Being forced to decrypt or provide your password is a violation of your Fifth Amendment rights because it's a testimonial act, which is what the Fifth Amendment protects against," a rep for the Electronic Frontier Foundation tells Gizmodo. A federal court ruled a similar password request was unconstitutional in 2012.