gesture security
n.— «His agency would mix up the deployment of the marshals, presumably to fool the bad guys. This, of course, assumes the bad guys had prior knowledge of which flights the incognito air marshals would be on. Unless I’m missing something, mixing up air marshals makes as much sense as betting on the blind man in a shell game. The British have a name for this type of charade. It’s called “gesture security,” and it consists of a lot of conspicuous security measures following an attack.» —“More Gestures” by Christopher Orlet American Spectator (Arlington, Virginia) July 5, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
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