Other programs can usually (and, as root, always) change pulseaudio's volume. In some cases, this leads to damaged equipment or hearing loss. Add a configuration setting that denies volume control to any program other than alsa or pulseaudio.
PulseAudio has programming interfaces for controlling the volume, which is used by the volume control applet in gnome among other programs. Do you want access limitations to that interface, or are you only talking about the alsa mixer interface? The access to the alsa mixer is governed by the permission bits on /dev/snd/controlC*. There's nothing pulseaudio can do about that. It's up to the distribution to manage the device permissions. What other programs do you have in mind, by the way? Deliberately malicious applications or something else?
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