Question

If you were the TSA and had to choose between selecting a false positive and a false negative passenger which would you choose and why?

Answer 1

The job of TSA is to screen all commercial airline passengers and baggage and report any suspect passengers and baggage.

False positive is the false suspecting a passenger or baggage when in reality it is clean.

False negative is to letting go a passenger/luggage carrying illegal items, undetected.

We need to keep a balance between false positive and a false negative so that the legal passengers are not offended and also to minimize the probability of not detecting the illegal items. But from national security and safety perspective of passengers, we need to give more weightage to  False negative, so that there is very low chance that illegal items go undetected.