In about-face, Sweden offers to question Assange in London

Swedish prosecutors on Friday offered to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, potentially breaking a stalemate in an almost five-year-old investigation into alleged sex crimes by the anti-secrecy activist.

Prosecutors had previously refused to travel to London, where Assange has spent almost three years inside the Ecuadorean embassy in a bid to avoid arrest and extradition.

Lead prosecutor Marianne Ny explained the change in position by saying some of the crimes the 43-year-old Australian is accused of will reach their statute of limitations in August.

"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," Ny said in a statement.

"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward."

Sweden ordered Assange's arrest in August 2010. He has not been formally indicted but he faces allegations of rape, sexual molestation and illegal coercion involving two women. Karin Rosander, spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said the latter two allegations expire after five years, rape after 10 years.

Assange denies the women's claims.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said the Swedish decision was "a victory for Julian," but criticized the delay.

"I think it's absolutely outrageous that it took the Swedish prosecutor 4 1/2 years to come to this conclusion after maintaining that she couldn't come to London because it would be illegal to do so," he said. "Obviously that was a bogus argument."

It was unclear how soon a prosecutor could come to London, if Assange agrees to the interview.

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In about-face, Sweden offers to question Assange in London

Sweden offers to question Assange in London about alleged sex crimes

London Swedish prosecutors on Friday offered to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, potentially breaking a stalemate in an almost five-year-old investigation into alleged sex crimes.

Prosecutors had previously refused to travel to London, where Assange has spent almost three years inside the Ecuadorean embassy. Lead prosecutor Marianne Ny explained the change in position by saying some of the crimes the 43-year-old Australian is accused of will reach their statute of limitations in August.

"My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorean embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview, and that he would need to be present in Sweden in any case should there be a trial in the future," Ny said in a statement.

"Now that time is of the essence, I have viewed it therefore necessary to accept such deficiencies in the investigation and likewise take the risk that the interview does not move the case forward," Ny said.

She said she had made a request to Assange's legal team on Friday to interview him in London and to have a DNA sample taken with a swab. She said permission was also being sought from Ecuadorean authorities.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said the Swedish decision was "a victory for Julian," but criticized the delay.

"I think it's absolutely outrageous that it took the Swedish prosecutor 4 1/2 years to come to this conclusion after maintaining that she couldn't come to London because it would be illegal to do so," he said. "Obviously that was a bogus argument."

One of Assange's defense lawyers, Per Samuelson, welcomed the move and said Assange would likely accept the offer. He said he had spoken to Assange early Friday.

"This is something we've demanded for over four years," Samuelson told The Associated Press. "Julian Assange wants to be interviewed so he can be exonerated."

Friday's move comes after Assange appealed his detention order to Sweden's Supreme Court, which earlier this week asked Sweden's prosecutor-general to issue an opinion.

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Sweden offers to question Assange in London about alleged sex crimes

Obama administration’s encryption concerns meant to start a debate

U.S. President Barack Obamas administration still believes in the use of encryption to protect digital information, even after top officials have questioned how law enforcement agencies will get access to data on encrypted devices, a White House advisor said.

There is no scenario in which the U.S. government wants weaker encryption, Michael Daniel, the White Houses cybersecurity coordinator, said Thursday.

But Obama and other officials have raised questions about how to deal with technology that puts information literally beyond the reach of law enforcement under any sort of due process, Daniel said during a discussion about encryption and law enforcement at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C.

In recent months, FBI director James Comey, U.S. National Security Agency director Michael Rogers and Obama himself have all raised concerns about law enforcement access to encrypted communications.

The officials raised those concerns after moves by Apple and Google to include encryption on smartphone operating systems, in part in response to news reports about large-scale surveillance programs at the NSA. But the concerns were meant to kick start a broad public debate about the amount of data law enforcement agencies should have access to, Daniel said.

Daniel didnt offer any suggestions about how to allow police access to encrypted data without building back doors into devices, but he said its important for the U.S. to work out a process that is acceptable to police, to tech vendors and to the public. The U.S. needs to come up with a solution that it can show the rest of the world as an alternative to more invasive options being pushed by China and other countries, he said.

This is a problem thats worth a lot of graduate students time, he said.

The debate about law enforcement access to electronic devices isnt going away, with the growing adoption of the Internet of things, drones and autonomous vehicles, noted Daniel Castro, vice president at ITIF. Law enforcement agencies will have interest in similar levels of access to those technologies as it does to smartphones and other devices, he said.

Other speakers at the ITIF event questioned how a new U.S. policy could create a process for law enforcement agencies to get access to encrypted data without also exposing that data to cyberattackers.

So far, encrypted communications havent created much of a problem, with the U.S. Courts 2013 wiretap report showing only nine cases nationwide where encryption limited police from gaining access to information, said Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel at Access, a digital rights group.

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Obama administration's encryption concerns meant to start a debate

Software Development Kit simplifies database security.

Tools brings easy encryption for database fields and file names

MILWAUKEE, -- PKWARE today introduced new, easy-to-use features in its Smart Encryption Software Development Kit (SDK) to provide architects with strong encryption they can trust. As data breaches multiply, more businesses are looking at data level strategies to protect their customers and assets from threats inside and outside the organization.

"As internal enterprise networks become as vulnerable as the public Internet, databases are routinely accessed by snoops and thieves, requiring security at the field level," said Matt Little, vice president of product development at PKWARE, Inc. "Modern architects need security they can easily embed into their existing systems. The field level encryption provided by our software development kit makes this process efficient and painless."

PKWARE's Smart Encryption SDK, is currently in use by tens of thousands of businesses and developers around the world. New features include:

-- Field-level encryption: Protects sensitive information in databases at the field level allowing organizations in financial services, government and healthcare to maintain compliance. -- Length + Format preserving protection: Preserves database schemas requiring only minimal changes to applications. Solidifies integrity for fields containing fixed length or format specific values like Social Security or credit cards numbers without compromising referential integrity.

These new features were created in response to encryption needs from security architects and database administrators at a major financial services firm needing interoperable protection for structured and unstructured data.

To find out more about how to easily embed encryption into everything from databases and servers to partner sharing portals and the cloud, visit: https://www.pkware.com/software/developer-tools

About PKWARE PKWARE's Smart Encryption armors data at its core, eliminating vulnerabilities everywhere it is used, shared or stored. Smart Encryption is easily embedded and managed without changing the way people work. Integrated across all enterprise systems, platforms and languages, Smart Encryption fortifies information security inside and outside the organization. For nearly three decades, PKWARE has provided security and compression software to more than 30,000 enterprise customers, including 200 government entities. PKWARE invented .ZIP, the world's most widely used, file-based open standard.

Media Contacts: Justin Kern 414-908-2976 justin.kern@pkware.com

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Software Development Kit simplifies database security.

Ryan Paul: Build a realtime RethinkDB cluster monitoring app with live graphs – Video


Ryan Paul: Build a realtime RethinkDB cluster monitoring app with live graphs
Ryan Paul is a developer evangelist at RethinkDB. He is also a Linux enthusiast and open source software developer. He was previously a contributing editor at Ars Technica, where he wrote articles...

By: RethinkDB

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Ryan Paul: Build a realtime RethinkDB cluster monitoring app with live graphs - Video