NEW YORK – A move in Congress by Senator Chuck Schumer that will allow cities to track this drones was blocked on Wednesday.
Schumer wants a law that would allow local law enforcement to act quickly and give them more ways to track drones from the air. He has also called on the US Department of Homeland Security to do so deploy better drone tracking technology identify the recent mysterious drones and their operators.
“Our bill explicitly authorizes state and local authorities to conduct drone detection and helps them better coordinate with federal law enforcement,” Schumer said.
The bill was blocked by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who says it is not clear there is an urgent threat. Schumer says he is not giving up and that he will talk to Paul about his views on drones.
“People in the New York-New Jersey area have a lot of questions and aren’t getting adequate answers,” Schumer said.
Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, member of the House Intelligence Committee, received a classified briefing on Tuesday.
“It reinforced the briefings I’ve received to date from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which is that I do not believe at this time that there is an imminent threat to public safety from the drones that people are taking care of,” he said. he.
But Gottheimer says the government should tell people what they know now.
“If you don’t give people information…then people will fill the vacuum, right? This can’t be the Wild West of drones,” he said.
Ocean County authorities are using tethered drones to monitor mystery drones
Authorities in Ocean County, New Jersey have taken to the skies and are using their own drones to find the mysterious dronesand they track planes in a command center.
“It’s wild, the amount of air traffic over New Jersey and especially over Ocean County,” said Sgt. Kevin Fennessy, of the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office.
Some authorities say most of what’s spotted are planes, helicopters, planets and stars, but Fennessy says he’s seen some things even he can’t explain.
An Ocean County Sheriff’s Office lookout drone, tethered to the ground, captured video of an unknown object.
“Something was coming towards us, and as it’s coming towards us it stops, you know, like a 180 degrees in the air and then drives away, and then comes back and does like a giant U around us. So that’s , that’s not normal for aircraft,” Fennessy said. “It’s definitely something that no matter what we see, we can’t figure out what it is.”
