Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency does a great job of dispelling the popular myth that Bitcoin is some untraceable, anonymous currency that only facilitates and enables transactions for nefarious and illegal activities. Of course, like every currency, it is used for nefarious reasons, but the book illustrates that it is by no means beyond the reach of law enforcement - at least not anymore.

If you like true crime, wild stranger-than-fiction stories, or tech, you’ll enjoy this book. If you don’t know much about crypto or blockchain technologies and want to learn, you’ll get a solid understanding of the foundations too - it’s accessible and wonderfully written. Highly recommend.

Awareness of bias in datasets and downstream applications is commonplace, but what about bias impacting the value systems developed to protect the data and algorithms? I recently listened to an interview with MIT Associate Professor Catherine D’Ignazio, who explores this issue through intersectional feminism. The podcast was great, but the book Data Feminism was incredible.

I’m delighted and ashamed at how many moments of insight I had while reading it. A stand out to me was a discussion early on in the book on ethical frameworks and how current conceptions fall short of addressing the root cause of why bias exists in the first place. Look at any framework; I bet you’ll see words like ‘fairness’, ‘accountability’, and ‘transparency’. All great ideals, but they generally set the source of bias in individual people and design choices, ignoring the structures that allow injustice to exist in the first place. The authors introduce adjacent concepts to six common values we’re used to seeing that acknowledge the systems of oppression that allow bias to manifest. Adjacent to ethics is justice, to fairness is equity, to transparency is reflexivity, and to accountability is co-liberation, to name a few.

This last one was particularly thought-provoking as I read the book while Australia chose to vote down The Voice referendum. Data Feminism is one of the best books I’ve read. If you’re sceptical about how we can apply feminism to data science or AI, I encourage you to read the first chapter at least.

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing is a great read covering fascinating history.

With captivating clarity, Shapiro explains the technicalities of infamous hacks like Paris Hilton’s phone to the cyber attacks on the DNC (never have I seen buffer overflows explained so well!).

But he goes further and critiques the social and psychological structures that make these scenarios possible. If you think cybersecurity is a purely technical problem, this book will change your mind. I highly recommend it—even for anyone with just a passing interest in cyber security.