The US government has subpoenaed the social networking site Twitter for personal details of people connected to Wikileaks, court documents show.

The San Francisco-based website was given three days to respond was also told not to disclose that it had been served the subpoena, or the existence of the investigation.

However, the same court removed those restrictions on Wednesday and authorised Twitter to disclose the order to its customers.

In a filing made public today, Microsoft is seeking a patent for something it calls "One-Way Public Relationships" in social networks and other online properties.

Unless there's some innovative nuance hidden in the text of the application, it seems like Microsoft could face an uphill climb in its quest for a patent on this one.

After a remarkably resilient lifetime, in which its death was announced prematurely several times, the music CD finally looks to be on its way out. Figures released by the BPI this week show a 12.4 per cent decline in CD albums sales.

The picture for album sales is likely to get worse. HMV is closing 60 stores with the chain's shares trading at a quarter of their value a year ago. HMV hardly helped matters by pricing goods cheaper on its online store - effectively taxing people who bothered to go to its stores.

There's something rather ironic that the US government's document on how to get various US government agencies to prevent future leaks (a la Wikileaks) was quickly leaked to the press. But, it's not really that surprising, is it?

Of course, the main thrust of the document isn't to question whether or not so much secrecy is really necessary, but to send out a memo to various government agencies suggesting they use psychiatrists and sociologists to sniff out workers who might be disgruntled.

The goal of The High Authority for the Protection of works on the Internet (HADOPI) is to stop piracy, but French internet users are learning that the only thing HADOPI has effectively stopped is low rates for an internet connection.

What's ridiculous is the fact that, now, those who aren't pirating material are also being punished for these laws as well. Meanwhile, pirates are migrating to more secure sources, so the only people HADOPI is really punishing are non-pirates and pirates who don't know what they are doing.

Hacker Claims To Have The PS3's Front Door KeysFamed hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz, who among other things helped crack the iPhone, reckons he's found what are essentially the keys to the PlayStation 3. And has posted them online for the world to see.

The root key is a signature of sorts, that lets the PS3 know that the program that's about to run on the console is a legitimate piece of software.

According to multiple postings on Microsoft's official support forum for Windows Live, a number of users are reporting that their entire Hotmail accounts have been completely deleted without warning.

Users can still log in sans issue. However, they arrive at empty inboxes: No custom folders, no messages in "Sent" or "Deleted," nothing.

Hungary is introducing on Saturday a controversial media law that critics say will turn the clock back and re-introduce totalitarian rule in the former Communist nation.

The legislation has been compared by the opposition to the way the press had been treated during Hungary's Communist era and under other totalitarian regimes.

The group's Chief Representative to the EU, Olivier Basille, said the legislation is the worst media law of all European Union countries, including Italy, where the prime minister attempted to sue international media.

Mobile calls and texts made on any GSM network can be eavesdropped upon using four cheap phones and open source software, say security researchers.

He said many of the pieces in the eavesdropping toolkit already existed thanks to work by other security researchers but there was one part the pair had to create themselves.

Mr Nohl said the motivation for carrying out the research was to create awareness around the problem and perhaps prompt operators to improve security.

The Chinese regulator has declared Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom as illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.

The ruling is designed to protect the state-owned carriers, a Xinhua report said.