There is a risk of creating the same situation as exists with the police stop and search powers which lead to innocent young black men being stopped many times where a comparable white man would probably never be stopped in his life. It leads to anger, alienation etc, all of which are factors which drive people more towards extremism, thereby exacerbating the problem.

Also, if racial profiling is too heavily relied on, it may make security less likely to take other factors into account, meaning that non typical terrorists find it easier to get through security. There have been several cases of islamic terrorists being white or afro caribbean in ethnicity. Terrorist groups would soon find ways of exploiting this by choosing people for missions if they look less typically arabic, or have names which are not typically muslim.