You can find extremists in any nation/religion, and it doesn't make much sense to make life hard for _everyone else_.
Ironically, having a coarse filter that sorts people based on nationality/religion as one of the first level filters actually makes life easier for everyone else. The other option is to profile everyone and pass these profiles through an extremely fine filter - which is what the SM profile information in the article seems to be targeted for.
So, choose your poison. Do you want everyone to be intensively profiled at the cost of privacy, or do you want to be filtered using broad parameters such as religion and nationality?
As coming from somewhat chaotic part of the world to have some peaceful life, the hoops I had to jump through (visas, immigration, airport checks, constant secondary inspections etc), it really bothers me. Mind you, I am a white male with very good educational background in my own country, and in the US. Hard to imagine what it is like for some other people who may not be as lucky as I am.
Either way, as much as I dislike US immigration and so on, I cannot complain. This country provides me the opportunities that I have been working for, and I am grateful.
Seems to me that this step is probably the first of several by the US immigration to get this data and justify the move away from broad profiling (which they've taken flak for), towards the need for more intense profiling (which they're also taking flak for).
