The Trump administration wants to shoot down drones.

While that statement may sound extreme in an era of “fake news,” it actually has a factual basis. The White House is said to be floating proposed legislation that would allow federal law enforcement officials to track, commandeer, disable, hack or destroy drones flying in the United States.

First detailed by The New York Times, the proposed 10-page draft legislation currently doing the rounds of several congressional committees would allow the government to summarily track, seize control of and use force to destroy any unmanned aircraft it determines may pose a security threat to an area designated for special protection. The new legislation is being pitched because drones were “unforeseen” when existing laws against unauthorized hacking, surveillance and civil aircraft protection were passed.

“Potential liability under such laws restricts innovation, evaluation and operational use of technical countermeasures that can address the unique public safety and homeland security threats posed by UAS [drones],” the supporting documents to the proposed legislation are said to claim. Areas covered by the legislation would include anywhere government authorities are present, including the sites of search and rescue operations, wildfires, police investigations and other government activities. Agencies would be allowed to set more specific procedures on a case-by-case basis, supposedly to “appropriately protect” privacy and civil liberties.

Drones are “commercially available, challenging to detect and mitigate, and capable of carrying harmful payloads and performing surveillance while evading traditional ground security measures,” the pitch for the legislation says. It adds that promising techniques for detecting drones and mitigating their risks “may be construed to be illegal under certain laws” passed before the technology existed.

Under existing surveillance laws, intercepting a drone could be considered an act of wiretapping or illegally accessing a protected device, while destroying a drone could be considered an act of sabotage under Federal Aviation Administration laws.

Although the federal legislation is new, several states have already passed similar laws allowing law enforcement authorities to deal with drones. Utah passed legislation earlier this year that allows an “incident commander” of a “wildfire situation” the authority to “neutralize” unmanned aircraft flying within a certain distance of the fire.

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