Washington Post: Convicted of a marijuana crime in California? It might go away, thanks to legal pot.  Ed: I always assumed this would be an automatic order of business once a state legalized pot, basically expunging the criminal record of every single victim of pot prohibition and giving them their lives back.

Bitcoinist: EU’s Bitcoin database could make privacy a thing of the past

Financial Times: German cartel office warns Facebook over personal data collection

Related from WaPo: Facebook wants your face data–in the name of privacy, it says

The Moscow Times: Russia to grant police access to bank customers’ biometric data

Planet Biometrics: Germany mulls facial recognition at all train stations

TechRepublic: MIT’s automated machine learning works 100x faster than human data scientists

Wired UK: Curbing your data addiction will help you make better decisions

Quartz: This year the world woke up to the society-shifting power of artificial intelligence

AP: Killings of women soared in the last decade amid Mexico’s Drug War

Fortune: Facebook accused of privacy violations in France

National Law Review: Wave of Illinois biometric privacy lawsuits continues unabated

CNET: Law enforcement requests for Facebook user data up 21 percent

Nasdaq: How the EU’s new privacy law will impact Big Tech in 2018

Ars Technica: Hackers take control of security firm’s domain, steal secret data

Techdirt: Another court says compelled password production doesn’t violate the Fifth Amendment

Government Technology: Public opinion often sets privacy standards for smart city tech

Washington Post: Former navy pilot describes encounter with UFO studied by secretive Pentagon program

High Times: Study shows that people prefer legal weed over alcohol

Mother Nature Network: 7 mind-bending facts about magic mushrooms