Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority limitations expiring for some of the allegations, the prosecutor relented and agreed to question Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy. The UK agreed to the interview in May awaiting Ecuadorean approval. Assange said he would go to Sweden if provided with a diplomatic guarantee that he would not be turned over to the United States, to which the Swedish foreign ministry stated that Sweden's legislation does not allow any judicial decision like extradition to be predetermined. However, the Swedish government is free to reject extradition requests from non-EU countries, independent of any court decision. Assange was arrested in his absence 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