House Subcommittee Markup of HR 1646

Yesterday the Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing where four bills were recommended to the full Committee for consideration. Among those was HR 1646, the Homeland Security 3 Drone Assessment and Analysis Act.

Amendments

Two amendments were offered for HR 1646, one by Rep. Coleman (D,NJ) the author of the bill, and one from Rep. Scott Perry (R,PA). Both amendments were adopted by voice vote. The Coleman amendment expanded the participation in the study development process and added State and local fusion centers to the list of agencies that would receive copies of the required study. The Perry amendment limited the maximum size of ‘medium sized’ drones to 1300 lbs and stressed the need for recommendations on how prevent and mitigate the risk from drone attacks.

Moving Forward

As I mentioned in my earlier post on this bill it looks like this bill will be actively moving forward in the House Homeland Security Committee. It could easily become one of those bill that is moved further forward as much for its show of bipartisan support as for the actual content of the bill.

Commentary

There is still nothing in the bill that would drive the report down to non-government owned critical infrastructure facilities that are responsible for the security of most CI facilities. While the addition of the fusion centers to the report recipients is a positive move there is still nothing that would guarantee that responsible security personnel would ever see the results.