I think we’re about to see an increase in interest in deniable encryption.
A simple solution is to have your encryption software automatically add a large garbage file inside every encrypted volume. When you have something to hide, replace the garbage file with your new encrypted data.
This lets you nest your encryption to arbitrary depth, allowing plenty of room for plausible deniability. E.g. you could put your financial records at the first level, pictures from an erotic crossdressing forum at the second level, and the stuff you’re ACTUALLY hiding at the third level.
That's an interesting idea. But it arguably wouldn't have helped Mr. Rawls. Investigators claimed to know what they sought, so they'd still argue that he was holding out.
Maybe it's safer to keep encrypted stuff anonymously in cloud storage. Mr. Rawls could have run his Freenet node on an anonymously-leased VPS, used Tor onion services for the various WebGUIs, and accessed it all via Tails. There would have been nothing local to go after.
Rawls’ is an odd case. If the reports are accurate, he seems to have believed that a strong password on his hard drive gave him legal immunity, and didn’t really try to conceal what he was doing.
Nonetheless, a line has been crossed, and cyber-libertarians have been predicting this breach for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing cyber-libertarians love more than a technical solution to state oppression.
Well, he was using Freenet without obscuring his IP address. That's pretty much not "really try[ing] to conceal what he was doing". But that's what Freenet devs have recommended, crooning of "plausible deniability".
