Julian Assange is concerned not about any proceedings in Sweden as such, but believe that his deportation to Sweden could lead to politically motivated deportation to the United States, where he could face severe penalties, up to the death sentence, for his activities related to WikiLeaks. On 16 August 2012, Foreign Minister Patiño announced that Ecuador was granting Assange political asylum because of the threat represented by the United States secret investigation against him and several calls for assassination from many American politicians. In its formal statement, Ecuador reasoned that "as a consequence of [Assange's] determined defense to freedom of expression and
Julian Assange which reflected his growing interest in cryptography; and Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines (2000). During this period, he also moderated the AUCRYPTO forum; ran Best of Security, a website "giving advice on computer security" that had 5,000 subscribers in 1996; and contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's "Underground" (1997), a book about Australian hackers, including the International Subversives. In 1998, he co-founded the company Earthmen Technology. Assange stated that he registered the domain leaks.org in 1999, but "didn't do anything with it." He did, however, publicise a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999, for