The Cambridge English Dictionary defines overreach as doing more than one’s authority allows. Although the modern society’s security apparatus is appropriate, distinct possibility for excesses exists.
I would rather not discuss an unfortunate recent experience, yet a prerequisite of writing for publication is being less reticent than one prefers.
A trigger warning is warranted: If revealing indignities that airplane passengers risk might offend sensibilities, “duck and cover”:
The cost of airplanes is astronomical. The expense of losing one and — worse yet — irreplaceable lives is such that screening is mandated before boarding.
That said, there is not an all or nothing bifurcation between protection and insufficient scrutiny. What I fault is technology ill-prepared for prime time and underpaid staff members unable to serve the public appropriately.
After participating in Southern Hemisphere cross-country ski marathons — it is unclear whether I am third or fourth in the world in the number of full distance marathons skied — I went to the Queenstown, New Zealand Airport — an airport seemingly incapable of advanced economy performance — on Sunday August 31, 2025 to fly to Auckland and stateside on the following day.
Two machines were present and, acting as if the security team was trained to handle high tech screening, I was sent through the screening machine allegedly more accurate than the simpler one. Yet, quoting the Gershwin brothers’ “They All Laughed” (1937),
“But ho, ho, ho,
Who’s got the last laugh now?”
Expensive software involved could not distinguish between “a pisser” and a pistol: I was treated as if I wielding a weapon of mass destruction while accompanying my manhood through a screening device.
As ridiculous as the error was, I was advised that additional scrutiny was inevitable. That is where, quoting Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” (1973),
“One day the bottom a-go drop out
One day the bottom a-go drop out”
My private parts were touched without specific consent or any warning!
This can happen to anyone reading this piece: More than one person doing so will suffer the same in the fullness of time.
I alert people to the possibility to ensure that everyone knows how to respond. Plenty of men would slug a pissant feeling private parts that lovers need consent prior to touching in 2025. One might be arrested, but most laypeople would consider the reaction reasonable.
I protested vigorously, especially after the first agent to whom complaint was made suggested that it was indecent to describe the indignity, conveniently dismissing that the actual touching of private parts without permission or warning was infinitely worse.
The supervisor with whom I spoke acted as if consent to additional screening was specific consent for an agent to touch my penis. No reasonable person would reach such an absurd conclusion.
I subsequently created three guidelines: 1). Specific consent to touch passengers’ private parts is mandatory, and it must be fully understood that such is forthcoming. (It is unclear whether hands should ever probe private parts in such situations). 2). Two agents should be present when such occurs. (This does not preclude perverts working in tandem. Protocols should address the possibility). 3). One should be offered a private screening area before intrusive touching occurs (although passengers might prefer indecent touching in view of others for obvious reasons, although it is a Hobson’s Choice).
I had occasion to speak with security supervisors in the Auckland International Airport, the following day, and was advised that these protocols are in place. Why are guidelines ignored if they constitute the relevant requirements?
Technologies and processes will be introduced willy-nilly, without exhaustive testing, unleashing nonsense to which no respectable human should be subjected.
Those profiting from insufficiently tested technologies exceed boundaries. People might prefer reversion to technologies that succeeded admirably after 9/11 until newer ones are ready for primetime.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
