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Owen Boswarva

@owenboswarva.bsky.social

A mix of stuff: mainly #opendata, #FOI, #dataprotection, #geospatial, #openweb, #genAI, #techpolicy. Half-formed thoughts posted for my own amusement. Still on X/Twitter at @owenboswarva. Sites www.owenboswarva.com (with blog) + www.datadaptive.com. He/him

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Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 16h ago

UK charities count the cost of Beacon CRM cyberattack www.theregister.com/security/202... Beacon CRM incident statement www.beaconcrm.org/incident + FAQs www.beaconcrm.org/incident-faqs (not on their homepage or showing up directly in search results, funny that) #dataprotection #cybersecurity

Beacon CRM has confirmed it was hit by a cyberattack that exposed data belonging to a growing list of UK charities.

The company, which markets its software to charities and has more than 1,500 customers, said its investigation remains ongoing. However, it appears that a substantial amount of customer data was copied, and Beacon is warning users to assume everything they stored on the platform was downloaded.

"Currently, our investigation has confirmed that copies of database backups were made and likely downloaded by the unauthorized third-party," it said on Tuesday. "We have evidence that shows a spike in activity during the incident timeline symptomatic of data leaving our systems.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 18h ago

Zoom call organised by Open Data Manchester @opendatamcr.bsky.social (with DCMS?) on 3 September: The marginal cost restriction on public sector data re-use – responding to the call for evidence www.tickettailor.com/events/opend... Context www.gov.uk/government/c... #FOI #opendata #datapolicy

Open by default has been the settled position for public sector data in this country for well over a decade. The Re-Use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015 limit what most public bodies can charge for re-using their data to the marginal cost of providing it — which, for anything digital, is effectively nothing. That restriction is one of the reasons so much public data is simply there, freely available under the Open Government Licence, ready to be combined with anything else.

The UK Government is now asking whether that should change. Its call for evidence explores whether public bodies should be able to charge above marginal cost for a wider range of data assets, to reinvest the revenue in data infrastructure, data quality and public services. The argument is that many public bodies lack the funding and the incentive to make good data available, and that charging could fix both. The counter-argument, familiar to anyone who has been around open data long enough, is that charging narrows the field of who can use data to those who can afford it, breaks the interoperability that comes from a single licence, and shifts value away from the wider public benefit that free re-use generates.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 20h ago

US AI leaders turn to Chinese open-weight models, challenging closed-source safety claims www.scmp.com/news/us/arti... Comments from Andrew Ng, former head of Google Brain and former chief scientist at Baidu #genAI #techpolicy #opensource #openweights

In his remarks on Saturday, Ng suggested that Anthropic's opposition to open-source AI development was a form of "regulatory capture" with the goal of maintaining their market-leading position.

"Two or three years ago, I was in a room where a number of executives from a number of companies … were saying to government regulators, frankly, misleading, hyperbolic things about AI safety in order to try to drive regulatory capture," said Ng, who hired Amodei in 2014 to work at Baidu.

"At this moment in time, there's broad awareness in Washington, DC, of these regulatory capture moves."

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 20h ago

Why am I even on Bluesky? Apparently we are celebrating the death of Rod Liddle and nobody told me Frankly I've been disappointed by the lack of bile in my feed. All I've seen is weak second-order stuff about how cringe Rosie Duffield and Ben Goldacre are etc.

Screenshot of headline and standfirst from a Telegraph column by Joanna Williams:
They are celebrating the death of Rod Liddle on Bluesky, and it's even worse than you think
The 'Be Kind' mob betrays its true nature with torrents of hate – and even the dead aren't safe

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · yesterday

We've had Scooby Doo in the UK for at least 50 years because I remember how delighted child me was by the first Batman and Robin crossover episode bsky.app/profile/masn...

Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 2d ago

I apologize to the entire United Kingdom for not knowing whether or not Scooby Doo had made it across the Atlantic. I know America exports a ton of cultural artifacts, but not all of them. Just a few weeks ago Ben told me there were no Chipotles in the UK (which was wrong).

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · yesterday

Who is the UK's science minister? Not raised specifically in today's SIT Committee letter … committees.parliament.uk/committee/13... … but THE reports BIST has "repeatedly declined to confirm" a Labour Party post saying Chris McDonald has been appointed www.timeshighereducation.com/news/vital-i...

The university sector is still awaiting confirmation of who will be the next science minister, following the departure of Patrick Vallance as part of new prime minister Andy Burnham’s reshuffle.

Although Chris McDonald was named by a Labour Party LinkedIn account as his replacement, the appointment has yet to be formally announced on other channels and the newly formed Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has repeatedly declined to confirm the post.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

Had an email from the Hansard Society to say the software provider that manages their contact information (Beacon CMS) has been hacked, and miscreants on the internet might have my email address 😱 Dark days for democracy

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

The Seventh UK National Action Plan for Open Government (NAP7): Analysis of initial evidence gathering www.gov.uk/government/c... 78 individual submissions comprising 139 ideas #Opendata is the second most popular sub-theme (close behind "public participation") #opengov #opengovuk

Screenshot showing the "data asset" and "open data" themes from a table headed "Access to information and digital governance – CSSU analysis of public all for evidence"

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

What are government's plans for science, innovation and tech policy? Committee seeks explanation committees.parliament.uk/committee/13... (UK) Letter from SIT Committee chair Chi Onwurah MP to whoever's in charge now #govtech #techpolicy

The Prime Minister announced his Cabinet members on 21 July, revealing that DSIT's responsibilities will be allocated to the Cabinet Office and two bolstered departments for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, and for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Writing to the three Secretaries of State, Dame Chi Onwurah, Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, asks if media reports detailing the destinations of former DSIT teams are accurate and when these details will be confirmed; when the transition of DSIT teams to their new departments will be finalised, and when the portfolios of all relevant ministers will be confirmed.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) spend data, transactions over £25,000, April 2010 - June 2026 drive.google.com/uc?export=do... (1.5 MB XLSX) #publicspending #opengov #opendata

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

I hope Anthropic will carry on developing Claude, at least as a hobby project. It's all good experience

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

If we convince them our power grid is collapsing maybe the AIs won't come here?

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

Bin apps are the hard problem in UK data munging, but I'm glad somebody is still working on it even if it's AI agents

Tom Loosemore @tomski.com · 2d ago

I've written a long blog post about AI Agents and the need for those running services to prepare - technically, operationally, commercially, strategically, legally and in terms of policy. AI Agents could be a properly huge deal. There. I wrote it. loosemore.com/2026/08/04/k...

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

Tch the UK Parliament will never be able to regulate AI if it takes half the summer off

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

Evaluation of the UK's participation in the Copernicus Programme www.gov.uk/government/p... research commissioned by DSIT Early findings from the interim evaluation of the UK's participation in the Copernicus Earth Observation programme since rejoining in 2024 #remotesensing #openscience #opendata

Moreover, the key benefit of participation from a data use perspective may lie in hedging against the high impact (though hypothetical) longer-term risk of changes to the EU’s free and open access data policy. Under this scenario, Expansion Missions especially would be more vulnerable due to their more limited historical precedent for open data. Previous studies have estimated the overall socio economic benefits of Copernicus data to be valued at around €67–131 billion for European society. While this study focuses only on the additional benefit that formal participation brings, loss of access to Copernicus open data was a key concern for UK stakeholders under a withdrawal scenario. Although there is no indication that the EU would change its open data policy, this scenario could plausibly result in lost benefits of tens of billions in value. With the volume and quality of Copernicus data and products growing, UK dependence is only increasing. UK participation ensures the long-term security of comprehensive and resilient access to one of the world's most advanced EO systems.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2d ago

What does "after a short illness" mean? Is it safe to speak ill of Rod Liddle, are we sure he wasn't horribly murdered

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 3d ago

The longest ballot in British electoral history www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... As I'm sure somebody has already pointed out, 34 candidates means its mathematically possible to win the upcoming Clacton by-election on less than 5% of the vote – so even the winner could lose their deposit

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 5d ago

Google's search filter for time (last update) seems to have stopped working. Presumably it's a temporary bug, but as an alternative you can add the after operator to your search string e.g. "after:2026-07-30"

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 6d ago

#FOI response: Ofcom says that its total number of FTE staff hours spent on the Online Safety Act enforcement action against 4chan was between 0.9 and 2.6 per month between July 2025 and March 2026 www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r... That seems … low? Context www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...

Ofcom does not hold an estimate of the total cost or an aggregate cost of the enforcement action.

To provide a reliable estimate or aggregate cost would require us to compile and review timesheets for all colleagues involved in the enforcement process, and this is therefore not information we hold in the format requested.

However, we can confirm the total number of FTE staff hours was between 0.9 and 2.6 per month between July 2025 and March 2026. This included team members from policy, standards, legal and enforcement teams.

The team involved consisted primarily of a mix of associate to principal level staff. You may find the information published in previous responses regarding pay and staff benefits and staffing level and pay rates useful in this context in coming to a view on the scale of the costs involved.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 6d ago

UK Government spend data: ● Cabinet Office, Apr 2010 - Jun 2026 drive.google.com/uc?export=do... (3.7 MB XLSX) ● DfE, Apr 2010 - Apr 2026 drive.google.com/uc?export=do... (55.8 MB zip CSV) ● DSIT, Aug 2023 - Sep 2025 drive.google.com/uc?export=do... (0.3 MB XLSX) #publicspending #opengov #opendata

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 6d ago

Latest #openaddresses from local government: Mid Sussex District Council, in the South East of England, has released its Council Tax address list as open data www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-ad... (no download yet) Includes UPRNs for about 60% of the properties #FOI #UKhousing #proptech #opendata

Screenshot of geocoded Mid Sussex District Council address data visualised in Leaflet with background mapping from OpenStreetMap

michael veale @michae.lv · 7d ago

Parts of the GDPR are cited and interpreted by thousands of pieces of case law and guidance, but there's no easy and free way to find out what. We've made a tool which makes it super easy, for 13,000 citing documents, all in one place. More regulations to come! homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

Image of the interface, featuring Article 5 with citation counts per article and per paragraph.

Image of the interface, featuring Article 17(3) with citation counts per article and per paragraph, and sources.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 6d ago

Think how much Shakespeare we could have avoided if Holinshed had a decent IP lawyer

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 6d ago

The Times, in support of a scheme proposed by former Sunak advisor Jamie Njoku-Goodwin. Surely he isn't thinking big enough. Why not do away with the public domain entirely? Think what a boon to the arts it would be if today's creators needed permission to adapt Shakespeare or Conan Doyle.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 6d ago

When the copyright of Peter Pan ran out, Great Ormond Street hospital was given a perpetual right to future royalties. What if we started doing this for other works? Artists could agree to opt into this. It could be a great income stream for the arts. Worth a think www.thetimes.com/article/28cf...

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 7d ago

The Department for Transport has released final incident-level road safety data for 2025 www.gov.uk/government/s... (Great Britain) A long-running and very useful open dataset from DfT #STATS19 #roadsafety #transportdata #opendata

These files provide detailed data for road collisions in Great Britain from 1979, and the vehicles and casualties involved. The statistics relate only to personal injury collisions on public roads that are reported to the police, and subsequently recorded, using the STATS19 collision reporting system.

Final annual data is released annually in late July (brought forward from September) following the publication of the final annual reported road casualties Great Britain statistical publication. In addition, unvalidated provisional mid-year data (covering January to June) is released at the end November, to provide more up to date information.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 7d ago

The death penalty is morally wrong, regardless of entertainment value, and I hope I've made my position clear on that

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 7d ago

The challenges of sourcing GPUs as AI demand surges www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/anal... Securing production and availability of high-end GPUs is arguably a more important focus than development of foundation models, if UK policymakers are serious about "sovereign AI" #AIpolicy #techpolicy

The scarce asset is no longer necessarily the GPU itself. Rather, it is the right to receive the GPU at a specified future date. This resembles established practices in industries such as shipbuilding, aircraft manufacturing and energy infrastructure, where future production capacity is routinely reserved years before delivery.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 7d ago

Self-censorship on the rise: How legal threats are quietly rewriting UK news www.journalism.co.uk/self-censors... What was on the Radar: A Qualitative Study of Perceived Legal Risks in UK Journalism doi.org/10.1080/1751... study by Jingrong Tong

Abstract

Based on interviews with UK journalists, lawyers, and experts, this article examines perceptions of legal risk in journalism during 2023 —a pivotal year when the Online Safety Act, National Security legislation, and ECCTA 2023 anti-SLAPP provisions (ss. 194–195) were passed but not yet fully implemented. The interviews revealed that defamation, privacy, and data protection were perceived as the primary legal risks to UK journalism, prompting cautious practices, whereas national security and copyright were not viewed as severe. While journalists expressed varying levels of concern regarding these legal risks, media lawyers and a majority of the experts highlighted their severity. These differing levels of awareness may have been shaped by the participants' specific roles and experiences, as well as by contextually emerging legal issues. Furthermore, journalists and media lawyers identified strategies developed to mitigate these perceived risks, which were perceived as improving reporting quality but inevitably restricting journalism. The findings suggest that although UK law treats prior restraint as exceptional, in practice legal concerns lead newsrooms to pre-emptively manage legal risk, indicating a "chilling effect" of the law on journalism. This study provides a baseline for studying perceptions of legal risk in post-2023 UK journalism.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · last wk.

Inquiry finds MoD Afghan data breach was foreseeable failure www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Report from the UK House of Commons Defence Committee committees.parliament.uk/work/9327/af... #Afghandatabreach #dataprotection #opengov

99. The government's caution also affected audit and regulatory scrutiny. For two years it failed to serve the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff at the National Audit Office so that they could exercise their audit responsibilities and work with the MOD to ensure the accounts fairly represented the financial consequences of the government's commitments under the injunction. The NAO has staff with high security clearance who scrutinise some of the most sensitive areas of MOD activity, including the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. The Information Commissioner's Office was also constrained, for different reasons: it lacked the clearances and systems needed to conduct a fully independent investigation into highly classified material.98 These issues show why exceptional secrecy requires planned mechanisms for controlled democratic, audit and regulatory challenge, not reliance on secrecy alone.

Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · last wk.

CMA has published annexes to Google's response to its consultation on conduct requirements for Google search services www.gov.uk/government/c... (scroll down) The annexes provide detail on Google's Site Reputation Abuse Policy, SafeSearch, and transparency re ranking criteria #openweb #techpolicy