Word.ws English Dictionary

security theater

security theater noun: security measures which are intended to, or do, provide a feeling or illusion of improved security, while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.

Noun

security theater (uncountable)

  1. Security measures which are intended to, or do, provide a feeling or illusion of improved security, while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.
    • But some countermeasures provide the feeling of security instead of the reality. These are nothing more than security theater.2003 July 28, Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, Springer, page 38
    • I do care about security. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center and I believe 9/11 was allowed to occur through a failure of intelligence. I thank TSA agents for searching me: applause for security theater.2013 August 22, Jeff Jarvis, “As a Democrat, I am disgusted with President Obama”, in The Guardian

Forms of security theater

alternative formsecurity theatre

Origin of security theater

Coined by American computer scientist Bruce Schneier in 2003.

Questions about security theater

What does security theater mean?
Security theater means security measures which are intended to, or do, provide a feeling or illusion of improved security, while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.
What part of speech is security theater?
Security theater is a noun.

Words near security theater in the dictionary

  1. security procedures
  2. security service
  3. security services
  4. security system
  5. security systems
  6. security theater
  7. security theatre
  8. security through obscurity
  9. security van
  10. security vans
  11. security-by-design

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: security theater (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “security theater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/security_theater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.