A former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant has been in jail for seven months for defying a court order to decrypt his two hard drives.

He has not been charged with any crime, but the government suspects his hard drives contain child porn.

The suspect's attorney, Federal Public Defender Keith Donoghue, urged a federal appeals court on Tuesday to release his client immediately, pending the outcome of appeals. "Not only is he presently being held without charges, but he has never in his life been charged with a crime."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has weighed in on the suspect's plight. In a brief before the court, it has argued that: "compelled decryption is inherently testimonial because it compels a suspect to use the contents of their mind to translate unintelligible evidence into a form that can be used against them. The Fifth Amendment provides an absolute privilege against such self-incriminating compelled decryption."

The government has called two witnesses. The accused sister said that she looked at child pornography with her brother at his house. The other witness is a forensic examiner who testified that it was his "best guess" that child pornography was on the drives."

The man is to remain jailed "until such time that he fully complies" with the decryption order.

Source: Arstechnica