Critique of Software Security

Security is predicated on protection from perceived violence or terrorism, but who will protect us from security? Behind this statement is the fact that those in power regularly commit acts of real and symbolic violence and this goes unpunished – indeed it is legitimated so effectively that we think we are protected by these acts of violence against us in the form of security. This essay asks how the inherent violence encoded into software might be understood in this way. The arguement is that – rather than simply assuming that it protects the user from insecurity - security software itself constitutes violence. These are some of the conditions that produce states of emergency and that in turn create insecurities