Invoking George Orwell's "1984," and comparing Lancaster to East Berlin, before the Berlin Wall came down, protesters took to the streets of Lancaster on Saturday to decry the surveillance cameras that have been installed throughout the city.

The protesters, who numbered fewer than 50, were significantly outnumbered by the cameras, which now number 162.

But Renee Baumgartner, of Citizens Against Public Surveillance, who organized the protest, said she was encouraged that people came to the rally from as far afield as Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Maryland. And she vowed to keep fighting until the surveillance cameras were taken down.

Camera protesters march through city

She said that if Lancaster did not show its opposition to the cameras, similar surveillance programs would spread across the nation.

The cameras were installed by the nonprofit Lancaster Community Safety Coalition in an effort to deter crime. The nearly $3 million project has been funded by private and public donors. Private citizens employed by the coalition monitor the footage produced 24 hours a day by the closed-circuit television cameras.

On Saturday, protesters gathered in Farnum Park , across from the UGI building on Conestoga Street, where the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition has its offices. They then walked through the city streets, chanting, "This is still America!" and "Take the cameras down!"

They protested beneath surveillance cameras — sometimes yelling directly at the cameras — and outside the home of Mayor Rick Gray. Their march ended in Lancaster Square with a rally, where a banner was hung, reading, "Why Aren't You Crying While America Is Dying?"

The protesters had planned to drape plastic American flags over the surveillance cameras they passed, but decided against it, because some of the cameras were on private property.

One of the protesters carried a "Ron Paul for President" sign. Another had a sign reading — for an unknown reason — "Tear Down This Jelly Donut."

Others carried signs reading "Who Is Watching the Watchers?" "Cameras Only Prevent Privacy," "Big Brother Is Watching," and "Special Interests Run Lancaster."

The camera program "isn't about crime, it's about control," asserted Lancaster city resident Aaron Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said he didn't support "the criminal element," but said the cameras made him feel "like we're being baby-sat."

Racheal Droege, another city resident, said, "Americans are being very apathetic to what's going on around them."

Referring to Orwell's classic novel about a totalitarian society, Droege said, "What I see going on is '1984.' "

As the protesters marched along Chestnut Street, a blonde woman leaned out of her SUV and shouted, "I love the cameras!"

"Do not trade your freedom for your security!" Droege yelled.

Holly Frantz, who also lives in Lancaster city, said she was opposed to the blanket surveillance and "how there's little to no oversight" of the people monitoring the surveillance footage. She said that crime would be more effectively fought by putting more police on the streets.

One protester wore on his head a brown paper bag, on which he'd drawn the word "slave," and a bar code — it was a commentary on a future in which microchips would be implanted in Americans, explained the Martic Township man, who asked that his name not be used.

"It's where we're all going," he said. "They want to chip us. They want to know everything about us."

Another protester, Jim Compton from Boiling Springs in Cumberland County, said he was concerned that facial recognition software would be installed in the closed-circuit television cameras. He said he was wearing sunglasses, to inhibit any such software from measuring the distance between his eyes.

Compton said he was protesting the cameras because they represented, in his view, "a loss of liberty. We're losing our right to privacy."

Asked if the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition had any plans to install facial recognition software in its cameras, coalition Executive Director Joseph R. Morales Sr. said, "Absolutely not."

Facial recognition technology "is not, ever, anything we would seek" to employ, said Morales, who was reached by phone late Saturday.

Morales said that some of the opponents of the cameras have perpetuated conspiracy theories that he described as "laughable."

The coalition grew out of "grass-roots efforts, supported by private and public dollars, to address a very real crime issue," Morales said, adding, "There's never been any talk of social engineering or controlling behavior, or anything as sinister or ridiculous as that."

But Sam Ettaro, a self-described Constitutionalist from Clearfield County, maintained that the surveillance cameras in Lancaster were an affront to the Constitution, and were part of a social experiment aimed at controlling Americans.

"We feel Lancaster is a digital petri dish," asserted Ettaro, who spoke at the rally Saturday, and who has posted a documentary slamming Lancaster's surveillance cameras on his Web site, RepublicMedia.TV.

Local attorney Jim Clymer, who is chairman of the national Constitution Party, said liberty was at stake in the camera debate.

"We are supposed to be a free people," Clymer said. "We're supposed to be a beacon of liberty worldwide."

Clymer said he was calling on Mayor Gray, and other elected officials, to uphold the Constitution, and ensure that the surveillance cameras were taken down. He said surveillance cameras in Lancaster represented the city's own Berlin Wall.

Frank Cummins, of Lancaster, maintained that the cameras represented a "weaker, insecure, less noble ... side of our character." The cameras exploit people's fears, and represent a "kowtowing to cowardice," he said.

Cummins said that people should have the right to attend a church, attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, visit a psychiatrist, or attend a union meeting, without a camera capturing their movements.

"The opportunities for the exploitation and abuse" of the surveillance cameras are innumerable, Cummins declared.

Lancaster Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Sunday News and the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era is the third leading contributor to the camera program. The company has also advanced a $2 million no-interest line of credit to the coalition until it gets its 2009 and 2010 pledges.