With the 2026 FIFA World Cup less than 100 days away in the US, its seems the Federal Aviation Administration is pulling at all stops to keep unauthorized drones away from public gatherings – or anywhere else they are not supposed to be.
The FAA’s latest initiative is the DISCOVR Application Programming Interface (API), a new capability that gives authorised public safety agencies access to additional information about drones operating in their area.
short for Drone Information for Safety, Compliance, Verification and Reporting, DiSCVR, pulls together data about drones flying in an area and makes it available to law enforcement authorities. It aggregates FAA registry data, Remote ID information and details from airspace authorisations and waivers into a single, law-enforcement-facing database hosted on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) geospatial platform.
This one-stop investigative tool lets officers quickly see who owns a drone, where they’re registered and whether they’re authorized to operate in that airspace.
Previously, officers could see basic Remote ID broadcast data such as the drone’s serial number, location, and flight path, but there was no simple way to quickly determine who the operator was or whether the flight was authorized. Through the DISCOVR program, agencies can work with their local DHS Fusion Center to register for access to the tool and query additional FAA records tied to that Remote ID broadcast.
The process is made easier by utilising scanning technology such as the Z-Scan Mini offered by drone solutions company Zing, which assists in connecting officers with their regional DHS Fusion Center and registering for access to the DISCOVR API, to retrieve additional information about drone operations during incidents.
As explained by DRONESPONDERS recently, for a patrol officer or task force investigator, DiSCVR starts with an officer logging a drone’s Remote ID number or a general location into the system, which allows users to either enter a Remote ID registration number directly or draw a geographic “rubber band” on a map to pull up registered drones associated with that area.
The FAA made the return intentionally straightforward. It includes the name, phone number and address for the drone’s registered owner or operator. With that, an officer can quickly determine whether the operator has a valid Part 107 certificate, an airspace authorisation or a special waiver that explains why the aircraft is there.
In one real-world case, campus police investigating a suspicious drone over a university were able to use DiSCVR to identify and call the operator at home, confirm his approved mapping waiver and clear the incident without ever dispatching a team to his location.
When DiSCVR does not return a result, for example, because a special waiver is not yet reflected in the system, officers are directed to existing FAA law enforcement assistance channels, including local Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) agents and specialized investigation and enforcement cells, particularly in the National Capital Region.
Crucially, DiSCVR only shows compliant, “cooperating” drones, those that operator/owners have registered and are broadcasting as required. It does not detect non-compliant or spoofed aircraft.
Instead, its value lies in separating the “known good” from the unknown. This allows limited counter-UAS teams to focus on genuinely suspicious targets, rather than chasing compliant news media, campus surveyors or commercial operators.
Because DiSCVR exposes personally identifiable information (PII) tied to drone registrations, including data on underage operators, the FAA has restricted access to only law enforcement personnel and governed it with formal user agreements.
Before DiSCVR, verifying a single Remote ID hit could mean hours or days of back-and-forth phone calls and email chains across multiple FAA offices and systems.
The Transport Security Administration (TSA), which has been an early partner and heavy user of the tool for airport protection and runway exclusion zones, reports that those workflows have been compressed into minutes to hours.
That speed matters when a drone is loitering near a final approach path or inside a presidential temporary flight restriction.
“Working together across agencies, DiSVR enables law enforcement to enable careful, compliant and commercial operations without disruption and address careless, clueless and criminal ones in real time – something that was only a hope before this tool,” said Abby Smith, CEO of Andersmith Solutions and Former Executive Director of UAS and Emerging Entrants Security at the FAA, who played a key role in enabling the funding and cross-organisational cooperation to realize the benefits of DiSCVR.
To date, TSA has used the interface to conduct roughly 10,000 queries on drone user registrations and last-known locations. It has helped agents determine whether to dispatch interdiction teams or stand down using DiSCVR’s consolidated view.
FAA officials describe DiSCVR as a “soft rollout,” not a finished product. Currently, the system is read-only and still has gaps. For one, some special waivers are not yet visible. Real-time, handheld applications are an objective rather than a reality. Future executive direction, funding and interagency partnerships will drive deeper integration, including closer to real-time verification in the field.