A drone is haunting our neighborhood. I’m not amused.

I didn’t have Peeping Tom drones on my bingo card for 2026.

But then on July 14, the West Brandywine Police Department let residents of Wallace Township in Chester County know, via Facebook, that for a month or so they’d been investigating (and had witnessed) a drone flying over homes along several roads in my neighborhood at night, between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

“It has been reported that this drone may be photographing properties, including inside the homes,” stated the police department’s Facebook page. “Those residents that live in that area are being urged to be mindful of this aircraft, and to be diligent, especially if you have skylights on the roof. These drones can be equipped with high resolution cameras and have extreme zoom capabilities.”

Huh. Creepy.

Since we don’t have young children whose images, captured without our consent, might find their way onto the more sinister reaches of the web, and since our house isn’t full of luxury goods to be cased, I didn’t worry much.

Maybe if the drone operator chanced to peep through our windows he’d take pity seeing the proliferation of dust bunnies and proactively book us a deep cleaning service appointment?

But the West Brandywine Police Department’s Aug. 10 update upped the ante: “We have seen the comments that [the drone] may be looking for a ‘pet’ or some other legitimate reason. This is NOT the case.”

It is particularly disconcerting because Pennsylvania regulations stipulate that for nighttime flying the drones “need to remain within line-of-sight of the remote pilot on the ground.” Even if you aren’t unnerved at the idea of someone deploying a little electromechanical spy to look into your windows at night (when the lights inside make people and things clearly visible in a way they wouldn’t be during the day), the idea that the person doing so is on your property — or close enough to keep the drone in sight — should be.

I can easily imagine folks who already feel vulnerable — the elderly, women living alone, or people who have experienced domestic partner abuse or who have filed for protection orders — being terrified by that prospect.

The thing is — despite the West Brandywine Police Department’s gratifyingly proactive approach to residents’ privacy concerns — it is the Federal Aviation Administration that’s in charge. The state reports that some 11,000 people have an FAA remote pilot rating, and if this peeping drone is flown by a registered pilot, there may be little anyone can do.

Pennsylvania Act No. 78 of 2018 prohibits local regulation of unmanned aircraft. It also codifies uses to be considered unlawful, stipulating, for example, that conducting “surveillance of another person in a private place” is a summary offense and subject to a fine up to $300. But the legislation tees up the drone operator’s defense argument for them with this exception: “the person did not knowingly or intentionally conduct surveillance of another person in a private place.”

Responses to West Brandywine PD’s Facebook posts about this have been predictably mixed in this libertarian-leaning corner of the county. Outrage and worry about surveillance and invasion of privacy, of course, but also lots of drone-flying enthusiasts who chafe at any talk of curtailing their ability to pilot their unmanned craft wherever and whenever — property owners be damned.

Also, since there are a lot of hunters in this neck of the woods, there are a good number of comments about shooting the drone down if it is sighted. I hasten to add that — as tempting as it might be to shoot the flying snoop right between its blinking red lights — drones are considered aircraft and it is a federal felony to damage or disable those — punishable with a fine of $250,000 and up to 20 years imprisonment.

If you think none of this should matter to you because, hey, you don’t live in Wallace Township and no drone has been haunting your nights, think again. Aerial surveillance by drones is widespread, and largely unregulated. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, there are “no clear rules protecting individual privacy against drone surveillance. Despite the fact that drone surveillance implicates significant First Amendment and Fourth Amendment interests and common law privacy rights, the law around conducting aerial surveillance very much remains in a gray area.”

Regardless of what happens at the federal level, I hope that what has been unfolding in Wallace Township prompts Pennsylvania legislators to reconsider Act 78’s limits on local regulation of unmanned aircraft in order to better protect residents from unwarranted and nuisance drone surveillance.

Meantime, the West Brandywine Police Department wants residents to contact them if they see the drone on their property.

“Each home that this drone enters, are additional counts of offenses and if the pilot is identified sanctions will be levied, including criminal charges, confiscation of drone and revocation of their license, (if licensed),” the police department wrote in its latest Facebook post. “The use of a drone to invade someone’s personal privacy, (especially home space), will not be tolerated and the maximum, allowable penalties will be pursued.”

And maybe, just maybe, the fines accrued cumulatively will be enough to make drone operators think twice before unleashing their propeller-driven ghouls to hang around our windows in the middle of the night.