I was wondering how people work with the legal implications (in the UK) of using third parties such as the Post Office or courier companies to receive and send computers and digital media that they know contain pornographic/indecent/offensive material.
Knowingly sending such material breaks the law. I would be interested to see how different practitioners and organisations deal with this area.
This is an interesting subject. This is something defence people IMHO get wrong all the time. Forget for a moment about the legal implications of sending such material through the post, when you are dealing with evidence I don't think third party couriers and the post office is an appropriate method of transport. Even in civil cases the rules of evidence are the same, best evidence should be produced, and is subject to the same scrutiny as criminal cases. Anyone handling an exhibit should expect to provide evidence of its continuity i.e. possibly provide a statement saying time and date of taking in possession, the fact no other person has handled it/tampered with it, and time/date of transfer. The post office will not provide this, and I don’t know of any courier service that provides this either.
If the file is passworded (.E01) and the MD5 hash matches, then the problems will be minimal if any. Use Fed Ex overnight with Sign and Internet notification if you want a person by person note of where the package went to.