What is the meaning and purpose of “security”? How does it relate the the relationships we have? I argue that the formalizations of our relationships — especially contracts — provide the blueprint for ideal security. Many kinds of contractual clauses (such as collateral, bonding, delineation of property rights, etc.) can be embedded in the hardware and software we deal with, in such a way as to make breach of contract expensive (if desired, sometimes prohibitively so) for the breacher. A canonical real-…