"Racial profiling" is a powerful phrase. There are a lot of doctrinaire liberals out there who would equate paying closer scrutiny to an individual or group of Arab men boarding an airplane in today's environment with stopping a person driving down the streets of a suburb just because they are black. I'm not that niave.
I have shoulder length hair, am usually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt/flannel shirt, and I have, um, a medical condition
in my left foot that sometimes results in my car exceeding the speed limit. Out here in the boondocks where I live, I get the "yes-sir, no-sir, sorry to bother you sir" routine when I'm driving my Cadillac. When I am in my pickup truck, which has been rode hard and put away wet more often than I have, the stops last longer, they are more likely to search the car, and tend to regard me as a possible methamphetimine dealer. Irritating, aggrevating, of course - but understandable in an area where meth is increasingly becoming a problem and I "look the part" at least to some cops.
I repeat what I said before ... I'm not sure how my credit report or traffic record is going to assist the airlines in assessing my "threat potential."
Frankly, my biggest fear about all of the emphasis on the security of air travel isn't the invasion of privacy of this database, the idiocy of pilots carrying weapons, or the harrassment of some travellers - it's the worry that we are addressing yesterday's problem.