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Hank Asher is a millionaire businessman and the founder of several companies that retrieve huge amounts of electronic information about individuals. In 2003, he was hired by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to help them identify potential terrorists. This has been highly controversial, largely because of Asher's alleged past links to drug smuggling.

In 1992, Asher founded Database Technologies, which later merged with ChoicePoint. In 1999, he founded Seisint Inc.. Seisint was sold to Reed Elsevier in August 2004 for $775 million. Asher reportedly received $148 million and $250 million respectively. [1]

External links

• "State contracts with company founded by man linked to smuggling" (cache file), Associated Press, August 3, 2003. URL:http://web.archive.org/web/20030805062509/http://www.naplesnews.com/03/08/florida/d923085a.htm
• Florida Creates 'the Matrix', a Big Brother-Like Surveillance System with Help From Choicepoint-Related Firm, Democracy Now, August 7, 2003. Includes considerable discussion about Asher.
• Lucy Morgan, Troubled Business May Lose Contract with State, St. Petersburg Times, August 13, 2003.
• Man Implicated As Ex-Smuggler Quits Job, Associated Press, August 29, 2003.
• Jim Krane, U.S. funding privately run database intended for tracking terrorists, Associated Press, September 24, 2003: "Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble and exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records. ... Matrix houses restricted police and government files on colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire whom police say flew planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s."
• Thomas C. Greene, A back door to Poindexter's Orwellian dream, TheRegister, September 24, 2003: "The company profiting from this data bonanza, Florida outfit Seisint Inc., is run by a gentleman implicated two decades ago in a drug smuggling ring, according to the Associated Press. This certainly qualifies him as an appropriate understudy to Poindexter."
• Robert O'Harrow Jr., "LexisNexis To Buy Seisint For $775 Million: Data Firm's Matrix Tool Generated Controversy", Washington Post, July 15, 2004.
• Michale Shnayerson, "The Net's Master Data-miner: When maverick cyber-pioneer Hank Asher invented MATRIX —a controversial personal-information database—he gave the government a powerful tool for tracking terrorists. So why isn't he a hero?", Vanity Fair, January 31, 2005.
• John T. Fakler, "Database pioneer ready for new adventure", South Florida Bizjournals: March 21, 2005. "Database pioneer ready for new adventure. John T. Fakler. "With two court cases dismissed, serial entrepreneur Hank Asher is ready for his next venture."

This article uses material from Wikipedia.