Security: always too much and never enough Anthropology of a non-starter market

Abstract

The security market, based on public Key Infrastructures (PKI) did not succeed because security remains a paradoxical market. We observed security practices and reciprocal expectations, in this study the ones generated by the design of PKI devices. Using the framework of Actor Network Theory, we describe all the mediations required for sustaining a digital security chain... often based on very material stuff. A whole vision of the world should be designed, an ontology, doomed to failure if it formats practices and users by constraint. This vision should retain a variable-geometry, while calling on guarantors that transcend it, and not merely on commercial certification authorities. Will security architecture design be able to integrate the users' demand for adequate security, which renders security policies bearable as long as users are not aware of them?