Ellee Seymour

Dr Hans Blix will be in Cambridge tomorrow reflecting on the war in Iraq and WMD - and it could not be more timely following today’s relentless bloodbath.

He will be joined by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s best known diplomat; Lord Wilson of Dinton, former Cabinet Secretary and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge ; and anti-war campaigning former Labour Minister Tony Benn.

So lots of top guns will be attending a whole day’s discussion entitled Debating the Evidence: Freedom of Information and I am thrilled Geoff invited me along. It is going to be to be a riveting day of debate along these lines:

“Freedom of Information?’ raises urgent topical questions about disclosure. Presentations by figures closely involved in recent events, including politicians, public servants, diplomats, historians, and diplomatic and foreign correspondents will address questions that focus especially on the invasion of Iraq. What are the tensions between the right to know and government responsibility? Is the public entitled to full disclosure? Does the government have a right to withhold information? Historians confront similar difficulties in writing contemporary history, when problems of restricted access can arise. How have attempts to tell the truth been limited or enabled as historians draw on archival resources? Events leading up to the Iraq war, and its legacy, raise related questions. How does the evidence for the existence of WMD play into larger questions of evidence and its interpretation? Does arms inspection offer a case-study in the uses and abuses of evidence? How does expert evidence play into political decisions, and how much do we know - or not know - about the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath? What counts as evidence in the political domain will be the focus for this day of discussion on a subject of continuing public debate.”

Can you think of any questions I can ask that have never been raised before regarding Iraq? I wonder if Dr Blix will be as outspoken as during his Guardian interview when he said:

“I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media”.

I’ve been tagged by Dizzy and Norfolk blogger to list 10 things I would never do, as if life isn’t busy enough, so here goes:

1. Say “ignorance is bliss”.

2. A parachute jump.

3. Retake my Maths GCSE.

4. Give up long country walks.

5. Start smoking again.

6. Sing a solo.

7. Own a pet python.

8. Join the BNP.

9. Forget to apply my daily sunscreen.

10. Give up my daily fix of newsprint.

It’s now my turn to pass on this MEME to cityunslicker, Sicily Scene, Geoff, Maalie, Guthrum, Bel, Neo Jacobins, PC Bloggs, Jeremy, Nourishing Obscurity and Heather Yaxley - hope I haven’t broken any rules by adding an extra one.

Hot on the heels of the news that Nationwide may have put 11 million customers at risk of identity theft, I find that I might also be at risk following a warning from The Economist.

It seems they have suffered a serious security breach, their online shop has been hacked into from the beginning of the year, though it has has only recently been discovered. As one of their customers, my personal details were stored on their database and could now be in the hands of a criminal. They might also have one or two high profile clients listed too who will be mortified.

The Economist has since removed the shopping site, which must be costing them a fortune this time of year. But it makes me wonder how safe cyber shopping is, with online hacking obviously big business, perhaps more prolific this time of the year. Am I still safe with Amazon, a favourite of mine, for my festive purchases?

The Economist’s tampering was very serious, and most worryingly, it had been going on all year unnoticed:

“We discovered the breach on Monday, 6 November, when someone changed data on the site to redirect users away from our site. In the course of our investigation of that breach, we discovered that someone had been attempting to read our database since at least the start of the year. We do not know for certain that they succeeded in reading the data.”

They say they didn’t store banking, credit or debit card information on Economistshop.com, which is a relief, but it was still a clear case of identity theft.

Worryingly, a new data study reports that many businesses don’t think they can prevent such breaches, and Cardiff seems to be the place most at risk in the UK. Do you feel your happy to continue buying online? Is there a fool-proof data security system? How safe is our personal data in a third party’s hands?