Security Theater By Bruce Schneier

There is a thin line dividing genuine security from staged countermeasures done to pacify the public. Living in a modern society where technology made it possible to do almost anything, how are we to know which security measures are real or not?
Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they're different. You can feel secure even though you're not, and you can be secure even though you don't feel it. A renowned expert of Security Theater, Bruce Schneier coined the term “Security Theater”. This term refers to security measures that make people feel or have the illusion of being more protected without doing anything to actually improve their security. It is a show that agencies put on to make it look like they are doing a lot to protect us
These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets. It just makes that person feel safer. But, is the illusion of feeling safer any good? Schneier noted that “The feeling of security isn’t worth it for one has to give up essential freedoms and privacies to get it.” Also, it is certainly dangerous to present the aluminous security when the system is actually quite vulnerable to
It can cost money, time, concentration, freedoms and so on. It can come at the cost of reducing the things we can do. Most of the time security theater is a bad trade-off, because the costs far outweigh the benefits. But there are instances when a little bit of security theater makes sense.
We make smart security trade-offs -- and by this I mean trade-offs for genuine security -- when our feeling of security closely matches the reality. When the two are out of alignment, we get security wrong. Security Theater is no substitute for security reality, but, used correctly, Security Theater can be a way of raising our feeling of security so that it more closely matches the reality of security. It makes us feel more secure buying over-the-counter medicines, going to malls and flying on airplanes -- closer to how secure we should feel if we had all the facts and did the math correctly.
Of course, too much security theater and our feeling of security becomes greater than the reality, which is also bad. And others -- politicians, corporations and so on -- can use security theater to make us feel more secure without doing the hard work of actually making us secure. That's the usual way security theater is used, and why I so often malign