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As a spate of possible drone sightings has prompted local politicians to ask federal officials for more information, lawmakers have proposed various methods for dealing with drones.

An anti-drone law is passed in Congress. In Pennsylvania there are helicopters that monitor drones. And the US government is sending drone detection and tracking systems to two military installations in New Jersey, sources told CNN on Monday.

At the same time, the White House tried to reassure the public, saying that most drone sightings were actually legitimately operating aircraft or even stars.

“We expect the sightings to date to include a combination of legal commercial drones, hobby drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and even stars that have been incorrectly reported as drones,” the White House said in the national security announcement, adviser John Kirby said on Monday to reporters.

“We have identified no anomalies or risks to national or public safety in civil airspace in New Jersey or other Northeast states.”

Despite the lack of threats, Kirby stressed that the government is supporting state and local authorities “with technology and law enforcement assistance.”

Here’s more on what officials say — and what they could or should do — to track down the origin and purpose of the possible drones.

A number of countries where possible drones have been reported have announced the use of drone detection systems.

The systems sent to New Jersey by the government are currently being relocated to Picatinny Arsenal in northern New Jersey and Naval Weapons Station Earle in central New Jersey, the officials said. It was not immediately clear when the systems would arrive or be operational.

The U.S. government must also determine the legal authorities under which the systems could operate, the officials said, requiring coordination between the secretaries of defense and transportation.

Drones have been spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, according to military officials and state lawmakers. The sightings prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to place temporary flight restrictions on the properties.

New York and Connecticut have also announced plans to deploy drone detection systems.

In Pennsylvania, state police are using helicopters to “find out where these drones are coming from and what their purpose is,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Friday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to deploy special detection systems that use 360-degree technology to detect drones.

“If there’s the technology that can take a drone up into the sky, there’s certainly the technology that can precisely track the craft and determine what the hell is going on,” Schumer said Sunday when discussing the Technology spoke.

Although most officials have shared few details about the types of systems they use, Vijay Kumar, dean of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, told CNN that there are a few methods for monitoring drones – and the best systems use multiple techniques. Radar-based detection, radio frequency detection, acoustic detection, and optical and infrared sensors can be used to track drones in various environments.

“The main difficulties in detecting and tracking drones arise from their small size, agility and potential for autonomous operations,” he said.

Any “realistic approach” to tracking drones would need to leverage data from several different sensors, Kumar said. And “deep learning algorithms,” which can combine multiple data types and improve accuracy, “are emerging as the best approach to solving this problem,” he added.

Matt McCrann, CEO of DroneShield, a company that makes and sells anti-drone technology, told CNN that law enforcement would most likely use passive radio frequency systems to monitor drones.

These systems “do not interfere with any other signals out there, and depending on the methodology, they can be completely privacy compliant when used,” McCrann said.

The first step in dealing with a drone that may be suspicious or violating the law is to “locate the pilot if possible and get to the source,” he added. Only when that is not possible should law enforcement use other methods, such as “jamming the drone signals and forcing them to either return home or to their point of origin or forcing them to land at the site.”

“Jamming” — or intentional interference with the radio signals used to communicate between drones and their operators — can bring its own problems: It can inadvertently cause interference with other electronic devices, such as cell phones and Wi-Fi, says Jonathan Rupprecht, a drone lawyer , commercial pilot and flight instructor, told CNN on Monday.

According to Michelle LD Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, law enforcement officers would need a warrant to jam a drone’s radio signals.

She noted that intensive surveillance of drones risks violating privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 – the so-called Wiretap Act – which prohibits the unauthorized interception of wire, oral or electronic communications.

Hanlon added that many drone “incursions” – such as those into restricted airspace over military sites – could be “unintentional.”

“Many drones are piloted by children as young as 16 or 17,” she said.

She added that state and local authorities currently have very limited ability to take action when they identify a suspicious drone. “Even the military doesn’t necessarily know how to or can respond,” she said.

Expansion of local control

In addition to calling for more detection technology, lawmakers have also introduced new laws that could expand federal or local authority over drones.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has called on Congress to pass the federal Counter-UAS Authority Safety, Security and Reauthorization Act, which she said would “give New York and its colleagues the authority and resources to are required to respond to circumstances like those we are experiencing today.” UAS is an acronym for “Unmanned Aerial System,” another term for drones.

The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, says it would allow the FAA to “seize, exercise control over, or otherwise seize an unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft.”

Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said Monday he plans to pass a law that would allow local officials to respond to suspected drone sightings.

Schumer said local authorities in New York and New Jersey have neither the authority nor the resources to “get to the bottom” of the sightings because they are under federal jurisdiction.

Currently, drones are almost entirely regulated by the federal government.

“If it flies in national airspace or actually in airspace, then that is under the exclusive control of the federal government,” Rupprecht told CNN on Monday.

Drones heavier than 0.55 pounds must be registered with the FAA and meet the remote identification capability, which allows a drone in flight to transmit identification information. Drones flown overnight must also have anti-collision lighting. The maximum permitted height is 400 feet above the ground and the maximum speed is 100 miles per hour.

The Department of Homeland Security has certain authority to deal with UAS – unmanned aircraft systems – through the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018.

However, there are also limits to federal authority over drones.

“There are only certain authorities that have certain powers to ban and monitor drones,” said Rupprecht.

Hanlon described the current legal environment as a “real sort of turf war, if you will, between the federal government and the states.”

“The FAA is responsible for ensuring the safety of the national airspace,” she said. “But what we don’t have is a definition of where national airspace begins and local airspace ends.”

To give local authorities more power, Rupprecht recommended “very narrow restrictions at the legislative level” – such as requiring drone operators to register their aircraft both locally and with the FAA.

He noted that under USC 40103, U.S. citizens have a “federally granted right” to fly in national airspace. About 792,000 drones are registered with the FAA, and many of the reported drone sightings could be drones being offered “totally legally,” he said.

Therefore, any legislation that gives local law enforcement more power must also balance citizens’ rights to fly drones safely and legally, he said.