Why on earth would LEOs from the DHS tell a random civilian (you) how their secret list of flagging travelers worked? It just doesn’t make sense why they’d tell you this information because people trying to circumvent it now know at least some of how it works, and isn’t the entire point to catch people surreptitiously? It would make more sense that they’d try to keep that information as closely guarded as possible.

And again, I have only a modicum of programming experience but I could very easily see how if one was to go through passenger names flagging people for additional screening, I would easily include an algorithm that would look for multiple named individuals but toss out entries that weren’t middle-eastern sounding. It’d be very easy to write database code that would look for multiple names and then look for patterns in spelling that would flag people that you’re looking for as far as a middle eastern name.