Name won’t fly if you are David Nelson

It’s not a good time to fly for men named David Nelson.

For months, David Nelsons have been pulled off airplanes, searched, questioned by the FBI and sometimes searched again in an apparent dragnet for a terrorist by that name.

David Nelson of McLean says he has been harassed even when his wife and children have accompanied him to the airport.

“The very first time it happened to me, they just told me to wait,” he said. “About five minutes later, you start to see the cops coming out of everywhere. There were dogs and everything.”

Mr. Nelson said he had sent an e-mail to the Federal Aviation Administration nearly six months ago asking why he continues to be separated from others at the airport and questioned. It has happened about 15 times in the past several years. He received a response about two weeks ago, telling him that he needed to call officials with more information about himself.

“It happens every single time,” he said. “In the beginning, it was a lot worse than it has been lately.”

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials admit the security system is not perfect, but they hope to improve it with a new system that will assign a mathematical score to each airline passenger based on the risk they might represent.

Details of the scoring system will be included in a Federal Register as soon as this week, TSA spokesman Brian Turmail said.

The score will be derived from a secret algorithm. Passengers whose scores rate above a certain threshold will be singled out for more thorough searches. Others will be allowed to board planes unimpeded.

“We’re not going to give the actual formula out,” Mr. Turmail said.

The computer scoring is part of the TSA’s CAPPS II, which stands for Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System.

It is a refinement of CAPPS I, which uses more rudimentary data to identify suspect travelers. The information includes ticket purchases with cash, and one-way tickets.

CAPPS I is the system that has ensnared any David Nelson who has tried to board a commercial airplane.

David Nelson of the District has been taken aside every time he has traveled by air since September 11, except once — even though he is a Capitol Hill staffer whose tickets often are bought by the government. Sometimes he is checked multiple times.

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