It's nice of Yair Levine to provide an answer that rationalizes the US model in as flattering a way as possible. But he's being too nice. The real answer is, "we don't deserve it."

The harsh truth is that the US citizenry is a thin-skinned bunch of kids with hair-trigger identity politics sensibilities, governed by a toxic mix of political pandering, litigious tendencies and racial posturing by minorities and majority alike. We're not grown up enough to do the Israeli model because exercising and accepting authority in adult ways is alien to us. We're actually proud to have a system of parental control imposed on us, that codifies expectations of racist behavior. We view it as evidence of the procedural "fairness" of our polity rather than evidence of the infantilizing nature of the governance we demand.

"Racial profiling" is an example of the sort of bullshit idea that only the nanny-state-seeking US could produce. By forcing a ridiculous, Procrustean-bed standard of color-blindness in operational policy, we strip autonomy and judgment away from frontline authority figures, who are reduced to procedural robots. This actually exacerbates racist sentiments, radicalizes and hardens social identities, and closes doors to growing cross-racial empathy and understanding. If a white cop hesitates to act on genuine suspicions of a nervous, skulking brown figure with a bulge under a sweatshirt, because he's been hammered into believing he's racist until proven otherwise, you get a random untrained gun-nut shooting Trayvon Martin instead. Burying demons only makes them stronger.

Should race matter in who gets pulled over or stopped at an airport? Why do you need a moral policy there? Why can't we trust the authority figures actually on the scene with access to all relevant situational data? Should race probabilities from previous incidents factor into perceptions and default actions? Why not trust people to interpret them wisely rather than assume they'll use the trust to act on racist sentiments? Sure they'll make mistakes. Sure some will be racist, others enlightened. Not everyone can turn into a perfect Bayesian rationalist overnight. But it's better than locking in stupid rules. That's the only way people and systems learn.

Give frontline authority figures (NOT distant puppet-masters) more leeway to think and act. Screw random checks versus profile-based checks. That's putting authority in the wrong locus altogether -- distant, removed policy makers. Give the frontline people the autonomy and mind-expanding liberal education that helps them develop both empathy and heightened awareness. Let THEM decide if a guy being black or brown, or statistics should factor into their decisions at a situational level. If you trust them to act like wise humans, they will slowly and perhaps painfully turn into wise humans. Treat them as racist pigs who need strong rules to prevent them from acting like KKK types, guess what, you make that outcome more likely, not less.

An airport is a big, busy place. Very varied Arabs pass through them, as with any race. Smart, stupid, nice, mean, old young. And yes, peaceful law-abiding ones and terrorists. Do you want authority figures to slowly understand adult realities through experience, or blind them so they never learn? Do you want to indoctrinate them with a cute idea of all Arabs being Great Guys like Disney's Alladin? Perfect way to make them see bin Ladens everywhere.

In their training, teach them about both the positive parts of Arab culture, such as the Arabian Nights fables and Islamic contributions to science, AND the knowledge of terror organizations and tell-tale behaviors of fedayeen. Let them process reality like adults and apply their thinking to specific situations using adult judgment. Minimize rules that are not absolutely necessary.

Minorities are also to blame. They accept empty legalist/bureaucratic/procedural protections in the short term at the expense of hardening boundaries that slow long-term healing.

As a part of a minority that's generally more successful than native whites along many key metrics like income and educational attainment, but is in the confusion zone for "Muslim," I wouldn't mind if a thoughtful officer governed by enlightened policies of autonomy and accountability, chose to scrutinize me more closely in a particular situation. I'd welcome it as making me safer overall. I am more scared of officers driven by some toxic mix of inflexible rules and buried resentments towards caricatured monsters.

We get the government we deserve. As long as we walk around with prickly and narrow identities, quick to perceive slights and offenses, quick to scream racism and sue somebody at the drop of a hat, we deserve a snooping abusive Big Brother NSA.

Until we're willing to engage each other as adults, and drop social identities driven dominantly by race, and see each other as specific individuals in specific situations, learning about the world and operating as thoughtful adults, we deserve the gridlock that passes for politics. And we deserve our long security lines and ridiculous security procedures.