For watch lists of criminals, a false acceptance is worse than a false rejection from a security viewpoint.

• A. True
• B. False
• C. Both are equally bad
• D. None of the above

Answer: (B)

In watch-list screening, you’re balancing two kinds of errors: letting a restricted person through (false acceptance) and denying entry to someone who isn’t restricted (false rejection). The more dangerous, security-wise, is not always the same in every scenario, because the consequences and how the system is used influence the impact of each error.

The statement here is considered false in the given key. That means, in this framing, false rejection is viewed as the more problematic error from a security standpoint. The intuition is that denying access to someone who should be allowed can disrupt legitimate operations and erode trust in the screening process, which can create incentives to bypass or subvert controls and can complicate incident response. In contrast, while a false acceptance (letting a restricted person pass) is a serious risk, the context here implies that the operational and trust impacts of false rejections are a more critical concern in this particular security setup.

So, the idea you’re being tested on is recognizing that the relative severity of these errors isn’t fixed; it depends on how the screening program is implemented and what the organizational priorities are. According to the provided answer, the claim that false acceptance is worse is not considered correct.