If monitoring software is not specifically mentioned in your SHPO then you can ask for it to be removed. It is specified in mine, giving the police a choice. Only on devices that hasn't had it installed are the rules about deleting internet history enforceable. For a couple of years I had a Windows Phone, which had no monitoring software available for it. My PPO just checked the internet history. I currently have an iPhone. I handed it in to my PPO and it was returned 2 days later with no software on it. They did an audit in January and, shock horror, "why is there no monitoring software on it?" "Because you didn't put any on it". This is why you must get everything in writing. Interestingly even now knowing there wasn't a monitor on it, they didn't install any.

It's a control thing, to let you know that they are in charge. In my experience a lot of what the PPUs do is done under "colour of law" and unlawful. Note the difference between unlawful and illegal. Unlawful is beyond their powers. Illegal is against the law. If a gentle word with your PPO doesn't work, unfortunately your only remedy is to challenge it in court.

Monitoring software has been installed on all my laptop(s). My force uses Guardware. I only have one left now, but it was previously on one that was stolen and one which stopped booting. I was having space problems on the one that was stolen which had prompted me to look for disk space savings. It appears to work in two modes. One is a key logger which searches for trigger words and phrases and uploads them to the police servers with severity flags. I did a search for "Child of Light" (which is both a video game and a soundtrack album of the game by Coeur de Pirate). This was deemed enough to trigger an out of band visit. I've had no other questions raised. And yes, it does take screen snapshots and saves copies of temporary video files (so it monitors your iPlayer and You Tube plays). My thought is that it periodically sends file hashes of those temporary files to the central servers and then deletes the local copy when that's finished. I say this because after 5 years if it wasn't deleting the local copies, I'd be needing  a 10Tb hard drive. I didn't dig any further, however, in 3 weeks my SHPO runs out so I'm thinking of seeing what it has actually been up to for the last 5 years for my own curiosity. 

If monitoring software is not specifically mentioned in your SHPO then you can ask for it to be removed. It is specified in mine, giving the police a choice. Only on devices that hasn't had it installed are the rules about deleting internet history enforceable. For a couple of years I had a Windows Phone, which had no monitoring software available for it. My PPO just checked the internet history. I currently have an iPhone. I handed it in to my PPO and it was returned 2 days later with no software on it. They did an audit in January and, shock horror, "why is there no monitoring software on it?" "Because you didn't put any on it". This is why you must get everything in writing. Interestingly even now knowing there wasn't a monitor on it, they didn't install any.

It's a control thing, to let you know that they are in charge. In my experience a lot of what the PPUs do is done under "colour of law" and unlawful. Note the difference between unlawful and illegal. Unlawful is beyond their powers. Illegal is against the law. If a gentle word with your PPO doesn't work, unfortunately your only remedy is to challenge it in court.

Monitoring software has been installed on all my laptop(s). My force uses Guardware. I only have one left now, but it was previously on one that was stolen and one which stopped booting. I was having space problems on the one that was stolen which had prompted me to look for disk space savings. It appears to work in two modes. One is a key logger which searches for trigger words and phrases and uploads them to the police servers with severity flags. I did a search for "Child of Light" (which is both a video game and a soundtrack album of the game by Coeur de Pirate). This was deemed enough to trigger an out of band visit. I've had no other questions raised. And yes, it does take screen snapshots and saves copies of temporary video files (so it monitors your iPlayer and You Tube plays). My thought is that it periodically sends file hashes of those temporary files to the central servers and then deletes the local copy when that's finished. I say this because after 5 years if it wasn't deleting the local copies, I'd be needing  a 10Tb hard drive. I didn't dig any further, however, in 3 weeks my SHPO runs out so I'm thinking of seeing what it has actually been up to for the last 5 years for my own curiosity. 

Yes I have got Guardware installed on my laptop which I don't really have much of a problem with. It seems to work okay and doesn't really cause me any issues.

It is my tablet that really bugs me. I have eSafe installed on there (who I believe also makes Guardware). Everytime it starts up it asks me if I want to start casting to record my screen and audio which I always say yes to and then it is monitoring everything I am doing. I would have thought the software shouldn't prompt me and it would be a breach of my SHPO (not allowed to interfere or bypass monitoring software) if I said No.

The tablet also can not now be used to cast to my TV which I used to do from time to time as I would have to switch the eSafe Cast off which again would probably be a breach. I did accidentally switch it off the other day and I had to reboot the tablet to get it back on again.

Also when the battery got low the software stopped working and I had to restart it. It is bad enough having monitoring software on but I don't want to be responsible for ensuring it is working.

Guess I am stuck with it. I have been told by my officer that everyone is getting the software now but I can't help but think they are targeting me for some reason. Not sure why as I had fairly good visits from the police and have tried to work with them. 

Unfortunately my SHPO states that they are allowed to install risk management software. It doesn't though give any details of what this risk management software should do so I take it that what they have done is compliant and not worth fighting. It looks like they can install anything they like. It really winds me up with these orders that they are not more black and white and a little bit more in depth as there always seems room for interpretation.

I've not come across this before. If somebody is being asked to sign a separate contract with the police, which is effectively an additional SHPO to the one imposed by the courts, then I doubt that the judge would be impressed. Could even be contempt of court?

It's certainly unlawful and acting beyond their legal powers. Whilst they are quite inventive in twisting the words of a SHPO to mean something that wasn't intended, this is going beyond that. To amend a SHPO they have to go back to court and explain why they need it amended. That is the correct procedure. The difference is that they would have to explain to a judge why. 

Now whether it's worth fighting and one would prefer to avoid another court date (despite almost certainly "winning") is a separate matter. As an example the previously mentioned "pop-up". This informs me that I personally have to notify people that their communications may be intercepted. I don't. The software is licenced to the police, not me. It is their responsibility to do so under GDPR. It is an unenforceable condition. However, I made the value judgement that I'd prefer to not require them to live up to their data protection obligations to inform everyone I have online contact with and I just ignore it.