A profile of Hank Asher, the "father of data fusion" who died in 2013 after initiating a vast shift in privacy norms through his data mining software companies (McKenzie Funk/New York Times)

McKenzie Funk / New York Times:
A profile of Hank Asher, the “father of data fusion” who died in 2013 after initiating a vast shift in privacy norms through his data mining software companies  —  Hank Asher was a drug smuggler with a head for numbers — until he figured out how to turn Americans' private information into a big business.