Actually there are a whole list of questions like these on just about any Federal Application for anything. (Immigration, Employment, Security Clearance etc) and have been on the forms for decades. The original intent was catch folks lying on a Federal form years later and then prosecute them even if they could not prove an actual crime or the Statute of Limitations had run e.g. war criminals, spies, Nazi's, Mafia ....
The original design was never to use such questions as a means to detect an active threat. Unfortunately today's bureaucrats and politicians don't have the minimal degree of commonsense that was a given when the questions were first introduced years ago.....
