AMBER Alert Partners With Facebook

wiredmikey writes "The AMBER Alert program, credited with the safe recovery of 525 children across the country, has a new ally today: Facebook. Facebook users are able to sign up to receive AMBER Alert bulletins for their state which will be sent to them through the Facebook 'News Feed' feature. An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year. AMBER Alert is a voluntary partnership involving law-enforcement agencies and broadcasters. The new Facebook AMBER Alert pages represent an important expansion of the secondary distribution system and will enable AMBER Alerts to dramatically increase the reach of and impact of these life-saving bulletins."

Comments

Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

525 children in total...when 800000 are reported missing each year? I think this program is going to need more than Facebook...

Re:Low success rate?

[Stregano]

Maybe they will get lucky and push that number up to 525.5 or 526

Re:Low success rate?

[devxo]

That's still 525 children, and they're exactly doing what they should - increase their exposure, currently via Facebook. But since you seem to have better ideas, do suggest them.

Re:Low success rate?

[orphiuchus]

Well, only about 30% of amber alerts are actually strangers, most are custody disputes, and according to wikipedia in 2004 there were only 233 alerts issued. I would write a bunch more stuff about this, but its all straight from wikipedia and you should all just read it yourselves anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert#Retrieval_rate

Re:Low success rate?

[galvanash]

What a completely asinine thing to say. Even if it was only one or two, its certainly better than none. It amazes me how people can manage to find something to criticize even in the most altruistic actions of others...

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

I did not say that I had better ideas; however, I am not the only person to point out that the AMBER Alert system is not highly effective:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah seriously, wtf is wrong with betterunixthanunix? That's many lives saved and helped and all he does is complain. At least someone is actually doing something, unlike him.

Re:Low success rate?

[MightyYar]

I think this program is going to need more than Facebook...

They should partner with Slashdot - over 90% of abducted children end up in the basement of a someone who is socially awkward.

Re:Low success rate?

[trollertron3000]

Wow. I had a well crafted response but I realized it was a waste. I can't teach you human compassion in a slashdot comment..

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

Sorry, but you are talking about a program whose "success" -- which has been disputed by researchers anyway -- is several orders of magnitude less than the number of reported abductions. Independent researchers have classified AMBER Alert as theatrical, saying that in terms of saving lives or saving children from dangerous situations (which is what it was created for) it has basically accomplished nothing. According to the research, most cases of AMBER Alert successes have been custody battles in which the child was not in any danger at all, and in most cases AMBER alerts play almost no role in returning abducted children to their families. Hey, you can read about it for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert#Controversy_about_success_rate

Re:Low success rate?

[characterZer0]

They did not say that AMBER Alerts are issued for 800,000 children per year. They said that 800,000 children per year are reported missing. Is that number worldwide?

Re:Low success rate?

[Archangel Michael]

most of the 800,000 are simply misplaced or temporary. Amber Alerts are used for Child Abduction, mostly, where a hostile kidnapping has taken place.

Most missing kids don't get Amber Alerts issued.

Re:Low success rate?

[pz]

Yeah seriously, wtf is wrong with betterunixthanunix? That's many lives saved and helped and all he does is complain. At least someone is actually doing something, unlike him.

I too was surprised at the low success rate. That's not even 0.1%. In what other field would such an abyssmal rate be considered successful? Are there perhaps better ways we, as a society, could be spending that money? No, I don't have any ideas, as I've only just now learned how ineffective the program is. Yes, 525 is better than zero, but why isn't that 525,000? What's the limiting factor?

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple economics and statistics. You can compute the number of dollars / hours spent in saving 1-2 children, and evaluate whether that is worth it. Compare to relative 'bang for your buck' in fighting, say, malaria, or heart disease, or automobile accidents.

Re:Low success rate?

[Dayofswords]

I don't want to speak for the children, I bet they will say 525 kids is better than 0.

Re:Low success rate?

[Frosty Piss]

Indeed, the "Amber Alert" program is very much like the DARE program: Huge amounts of money are tossed at it, yet not only is their "success rate" tiny, but the program itself has serious political problems. Like DARE and its questionable association with the "War On Drugs", the Amber Alert program is seriously in bed with the Man Hating Feminist movement.

Re:Low success rate?

[characterZer0]

The latest alert in this area was for a woman who told a guy to take her child with him when she let him borrow her car (assuming he would return the car with child instead of stealing it). She did not admit this to police until the next day. The incident was held up as an AMBER Alert success.

Re:Low success rate?

[Seumas]

I have to question that number. What is 800k? That must be about one percent of the entire population of children up to the age of 18 in this country. Every single year. Also, I never understood the places they put these stupid alerts. Fine, put them on highway signs. Put them on the radio. But why put them on the TV of on some little web-widget on someone's web page? Chances are about 100:1 that if I'm watching TV, I'm nowhere near any place that I would see some guy driving down the highway with a kidnapped kid.

Re:Low success rate?

[trollertron3000]

It's not really that low. That is not the amount of alerts issued, it's the amount of children that go missing each year. They highlight that number to show need for the system.

Re:Low success rate?

[Alrescha]

"It amazes me how people can manage to find something to criticize even in the most altruistic actions of others"

It's only altruistic if those 'others' are paying for it.

A.

Re:Low success rate?

[Seumas]

And the rest are mom's boyfriend.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

betterunixthanunix seems to have no human compassion. I'm a father of two and do you think I would care about their success rates if they could save my kid? I don't think the other parents do either.

Re:Low success rate?

[AchilleTalon]

Well, even one or two more would worth the effort.

What really amazed me is the number of children reported missing each year.

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

800000 "children reported missing" includes anyone under the age of 18 who runs away. (This is about 1% of the Children in the US in the 0 thru 17 age group).

Amber Alerts are specifically for kidnapped or abducted children usually less than 16.

An Amber alert will not be issued for your 14 yro daughter when she runs off with that creep she met on line.

Its not the same thing.

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

Children include anyone under 18. About 73 million in the US fall into that category.

Every sullen teenager that runs off and is reported "missing" is not abducted.

Most of those 800000 come slinking home (or at least report in) months or years later.

Re:Low success rate?

[ae1294]

That really doesn't sound like human compassion to me...

Re:Low success rate?

[Quiet_Desperation]

A child predator appears.

"AMBER, I choose you!"

AMBER issues an alert.

It's not very effective.

What? Poor taste? Oh well.

What we need is to know how many AMBER alerts were issued to find 525 kids. I'm assuming all 800K cases didn't have alerts.

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

Is it customary for Amber Alerts to be issued for non-threatening custody Disputes?

My assumption was they were only issued where there was a threat of harm, or a finding of previous abuse by the non-custody parental abductor.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that should be noted is that the "800,000" number includes mistakes, hoaxes, vengeful parents, custodial disputes, and a myriad of other cases where the child is never in danger. I would bet that a vast majority of those 525 recoveries are in cases where there was no threat to the child, such as cases where the child was with non-custodial parents or family members (either by malice or mistake). At least according to Wiki only 70 of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 were actual abductions.

Re:Low success rate?

[flyingfsck]

Oh yeah? Who says those 500 children wanted to be found? These busybodies may just be ruining the lives of 500 children each year, who were happily living with their divorced fathers, after the courts awarded them to their neurotic, bipolar mothers. So now you want to ruin the lives of more children? That enormous number - 800,000 - should be a giant CLUE that there is something broken in the system somewhere.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets be honest 99% of those "missing" are just with one of their parents. Some court decided you were magically no longer a parent so they get declared missing.

Re:Low success rate?

[bws111]

According to http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf there were 207 Amber alerts issued in 2009. 166 of those resulted in a recovery. 45 of the recoveries were a direct result of the alert (someone saw the alert and called it in).

Re:Low success rate?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Let me tell you that the American public already has enough self-made excuses to go around looking for problems.

"I heard my friend is now receiving AMBER alert bulletins on Facebook."

A few weeks later...

"My friend has been talking about these AMBER alert bulletins on Facebook."

A few weeks later...

"That bitch cut off my conversation with that guy I was talking with--she started talking about her AMBER alert bulletins on Facebook."

A few weeks later...

"Oh look, there's one of those homeless people. I bet they're one of those sex offenders that my friend keeps talking about when she talks about her AMBER alert bulletins on Facebook."

People love to jump to their own conclusions.

I do not need any more random strangers assuming that I've done something wrong. When it comes down to it: you people are the ones looking at computer porn and watching lower class sexual innuendo on television and in the movies and in your pop music, not me. Besides, I already carry enough with me--do you think I'm going to grab one of your kids and start lugging down the street with them? You people have the escape vehicles... not me.

Re:Low success rate?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

800000 "children reported missing" includes anyone under the age of 18 who runs away. (This is about 1% of the Children in the US in the 0 thru 17 age group).

Amber Alerts are specifically for kidnapped or abducted children usually less than 16.

An Amber alert will not be issued for your 14 yro daughter when she runs off with that creep she met on line.

Its not the same thing.

Nicely said, I just wanted to add one more little detail that whittles the numbers down a little more: The point of the Amber Alert is "this just happened, they're out and about right now, do you see them?" It's about getting the general public, mostly people on highways, to look around and see if they see the suspect vehicle.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedobear, use molest!
...
CHILD was SCARRED FOR LIFE!
CHILD meekly returns to the POKEball.

Re:Low success rate?

[jgagnon]

How "antitruistic" of you. :p

Re:Low success rate?

[jgagnon]

Your success rate is very low?

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, i'm not a creep.

Re:Low success rate?

[Kell Bengal]

You are quite correct. I expect that most of those kids who go missing wandered off at the mall, and a simple PA announcement was all that was needed to reunite parent with child. Sure, they were 'missing' but they weren't in danger. An AMBER alert is specifically for when there is an expectation of abduction. The two numbers pertain to quite different things, and mentioning the two together was comparing apples with oranges.

Re:Low success rate?

[jgagnon]

Maybe not, but you might have seen him at the gas station the night before or maybe see him the next day as he drags the kid into a motel. It is no different than advertisement, if you show enough people it will stick to some.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

If 800,000 children went missing each year the schools would be empty.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who pays attention to Amber Alerts? It's like looking for billboards. If one of my friends starts constantly re-posting these, they get put into the hide feed. Not because I don't have human compassion but fucking a, it's not like I'm going to start patrolling the streets looking for kids.

Re:Low success rate?

[bws111]

You are correct. One of the tests for an Amber Alert being issued is that "The law enforcement agency believes that the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death".

Re:Low success rate?

[Hoi Polloi]

I wouldn't even be surprised if 30% was too high.

Re:Low success rate?

[Locke2005]

Wait... so more than 1% of American children are reported missing each year? Why haven't I heard of a single incident of any of the hundreds of kids I know of being reported missing? Your child stands a much higher chance of getting injured riding in the car with it's parents than of being abducted.

Re:Low success rate?

[jellomizer]

Being inefficient with tax payers money for a system that barely works, is not compassion. Could the money used used be put into an other program that could retrieve even more children. Like say 500,000 a year. I could buy an iPad to keep my face dry when it is raining. or I can get an umbrella for a lot less and it will do a better job.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The AMBER alert program may have only found 525 of those children but that doesnt mean that the rest of that 800,000 remained missing, they may have come home on their own or been found via other means...

Re:Low success rate?

[NevarMore]

it's not like I'm going to start patrolling the streets looking for kids.

If you get the urge to, theres an article a few posts down about sex offenders.

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

Well, the independent research seems to suggest something a little different:

http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/33/2/159.abstract?rss=1

(Apologies to people who might not be able to access that article because of a paywall)

The executive summary is that this article does answer your question: a whopping 50% of the AMBER alerts issued in 2004 were cases of non-threatening custody disputes. Other evidence gathered between 2002 and 2006 indicates that AMBER alert was most likely to be successful in cases where the abducted child was not in any danger (familial abductions) and least likely to be successful (to the point of accomplishing almost nothing at all) in cases where the child was in serious danger i.e. the cases AMBER was supposed to address.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is always the response for people wasting resources. "But if it only saves one life..." Yah, and it could've been spent better also.

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

Hold on there....

You are still reading too much into it.

Being reported missing does not equate to being abducted.

See this post by Amorymeltzer below in this thread.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The limiting factor is apathy.

How many people bother paying attention to an Amber Alert? then how many of those will do anything (call it in) if they see the suspect vehicle?

Facebook, having a history of getting lots of attention from crowds of people for things that they would otherwise find trivial or uninteresting, may actually be an ideal vector for improving the Amber Alert system.

Personally I'd have though Twitter was more relavent but i guess Facebook does basicly everything Twitter does but with less restrictive message lengths.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It amazes me how people can manage to find something to criticize even in the most altruistic actions of others...

Because uncritical altruism doesn't always produce good results. The Amber Alert system is to child protection what the TSA peep/grope stations are to travel security. It's a lot of theatrics to make it look like The Authorities are Doing Something about The Problem. It accomplishes very little. It's popular because... let's face it, most people have an emotional soft-spot for children; we don't think rationally about how best to protect them, and you hear nonsense like "if it saves just one child, it doesn't matter what it takes" (an argument that never seems to be applied to education).

In addition, these alerts grossly inflate the perception that people have about the incidence of child abduction. Yes, it happens, and it happens too much. But when everyone in the state is notified of every reported (and not necessarily actual) abduction, even when it might be 300 miles away, it exaggerates the scope of the problem. It seems like every few weeks another child is abducted "in your area". But imagine if they issued alerts like this every time someone reported a purse snatching, or a B&E, or a store hold-up? The public would be convinced these crimes were pandemic, and that it wasn't safe to leave the house. In fact, child abductions - especially by people who are not friends or family and pose no real threat to the child's safety (except when they take risks to evade capture after they've been spotlighted in an alert) - are quite rare.

Re:Low success rate?

[bws111]

Bullshit. In 2009 37% of the Amber Alerts were for white children. 29% were black, and 27% were Hispanic.

Re:Low success rate?

[CookieForYou]

Actually, given the massive money spent to build and promot the AMBER alerts, a substantial number (as in 1000%) more children would have been saved from death by spending that money on things like pool safety enforcement, suicide prevention, automobile safety, industrial chemical disposal regulations, etc.

I saw a study a few years ago, that the number of billions of dollars spent on the AMBER alert system would have been more than 10x as effective in almost 30 different government programs at preventing childhood death and serious harm. Sports accidents, car accidents, cancer, poisoning, pool accidents, natural disasters. These are all substantially more risky to children than abduction, but the 5000 kids who die of drowning in swimming pools each year don't make it on the evening news, so they don't seem to matter.

Of course, actually saving kids wouldn't quite placate the Nancy Grace "ZOMG the poor abducted children" crew quite as effectively. They are about sensationalism, not actually helping society.

Sigh.

Re:Low success rate?

[StikyPad]

Huge amounts of money? Really? It's really little more than another purpose for the pre-existing Emergency Broadcast System, with some increased EBS infrastructure under the premise of saving the children. At any rate, it's cost is minimal.

Re:Low success rate?

[jgagnon]

Every AC is a creep and a child molester. Most bite the heads off of neighborhood pets and plant whoopee cushions in nursing homes.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'll freely admit to everything except the part about being a child molester.

Re:Low success rate?

[CookieForYou]

Actually, given the massive money spent to build and promot the AMBER alerts, a substantial number (as in 1000%) more children would have been saved from death by spending that money on things like pool safety enforcement, suicide prevention, automobile safety, industrial chemical disposal regulations, etc.

I saw a study a few years ago, that the number of billions of dollars spent on the AMBER alert system would have been more than 10x as effective in almost 30 different government programs at preventing childhood death and serious harm. Sports accidents, car accidents, cancer, poisoning, pool accidents, natural disasters. These are all substantially more risky to children than abduction, but the 5000 kids who die of drowning in swimming pools each year don't make it on the evening news, so they don't seem to matter.

Of course, actually saving kids wouldn't quite placate the Nancy Grace "ZOMG the poor abducted children" crew quite as effectively. They are about sensationalism, not actually helping society.

Sigh.

The reality is "if it was only one child" argument is a red herring, because it indicates "if we didn't do this, we wouldn't do anything". In reality, it is a bunch of competing interests and we have to choose the optimal one. It's not a choice of "this or nothing" but often proponents of these silly programs pitch it that way to garner public sympathy.

I think AMBER alerts are terrible, a waste of money, and merely a balm for busybodies who want the self-affirmation of "helping children" or "catching perverts" when really, we're just chasing after a bunch of jealous boyfriends and ex-husbands most of the time anyway.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually - in the situation you describe there - i am fairly certain the AMBER alert would be issued. If you're the creep - don't do it. They'll snatch you dude.

Re:Low success rate?

[characterZer0]

Probably because the same stupid lady reports her stupid kid missing 3 times a week from age 13 to 17 because he comes late, and those 750+ reports show up the same as 750 different children.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's equally difficult to teach a person statistics, sound strategic thinking, or good judgment, either.

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

Hmmm, thats about what I thought.

"Least likely to be successful" may well be a statistical artifact of the poisoning of the data by the inclusion of all the custodial dispute cases.

If Amber Alerts were in fact restricted to the cases it was intend for the successes like Shasta Groene might make up a slightly higher percentage.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Child predators are a lot like Pokemon?

Re:Low success rate?

[bcrowell]

That's still 525 children, and they're exactly doing what they should - increase their exposure, currently via Facebook. But since you seem to have better ideas, do suggest them.

My better idea is to take the same effort and focus it on something that will do more good and have fewer negative effects. A good example would be better enforcement of traffic laws near schools when kids are coming in and out of school.

And yes, I really do believe that things the AMBER Alert have negative effects that are greater than their positive effects. For example, a lot of my kids' friends don't walk. Anywhere. Ever. They don't walk anywhere by themselves, because of the parents' fear that they'll get kidnapped. (It's not about traffic. They aren't even allowed to walk around the block without crossing a street.) They don't walk with their parents, because their parents get in the car to drive anywhere. This is the kind of thing that has helped to create the obesity epidemic.

Re:Low success rate?

[FooAtWFU]

I don't know about the money, but the "men are evil" stranger-danger attitude endangers children too. Most strangers are nice people. Most kidnappers and molestors are not strangers.

In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html

Re:Low success rate?

[mopower70]

A fistful of +1 funnies for you sir!

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, it is not a result of poisoning the data; AMBER alerts almost always fail in cases of children being abducted by people who plan to harm or kill them. The authors basically say that the success rate of AMBER is inflated by the inclusion of custodial cases, and that if those cases are excluded AMBER has a success rate that is nearly 0. AMBER has not actually augmented traditional police techniques in any meaningful way; in cases where traditional investigative methods fail, AMBER fails as well.

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

Assuming, of course, that you can remember everyone's faces hours or days later. Sure, if the kidnapper has some highly distinctive feature, like a big scare on his face or an unusual tattoo, or was driving a vehicle that was very unusual, it might work. As it turns out, though, most kidnappers do not have such features, and your likelihood of remembering some ordinary looking person you saw for a few moments is low.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen this when driving to a friend's house in a small town. When the elementary and the junior highs let out, they have police with automatic (press button to pop up the spikes) spike strips deployed, at least 20 certified, armed peace officers, vehicles with ramming/roadblock ability on the side of a bridge, and enough cameras to make a Londoner feel at home.

Even with this, people will drive their SUVs, pick up their kids, go *one block* to drop their kids off. Have sex offenders so won the battle that a kid isn't safe walking less than 1000 feet from the schoolhouse door to the door of the home that parents are that fearful? Are they afraid of some boogieman snatching up their kid, then holding off a division of police in some epic battle? Sheesh, this isn't Hollywood.

Even worse, what does this teach our kids? It definitely doesn't impart them any street skills.

Re:Low success rate?

[mopower70]

How is this insightful? "That's still 525 toilet seats, and even though we paid $50,000 each for them, they're doing exactly what they should - giving me a place to take a dump, which I will then post via Facebook."

Re:Low success rate?

[mopower70]

Children include anyone under 18.

Yeah, that's what I thought too. Actually, they have to be under 16, or be mentally or physically handicapped, and they must believe the child is in danger.

Illinois Amber Alert site

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

push that number up to 525.5 or 526

Q: What's worse than recovering 525 lost children?

A: Recovering 525.5 lost children

Re:Low success rate?

[icebike]

Yeah, I get that, but....

But clearly excluding custodial cases the rate is not zero, (Groene) and it only looks like zero because the system has been swamped with custodial cases.

Because Amber currently includes all (or a great deal) of the traditional cases, Police end up treating it that way, as do the citizens. So the police response is the same. No augmentation. No checkpoints. No vehicle searches. Its just another Custodial case 98% of the time, and that is exactly how it is treated.

When these guys did their study, I sincerely doubt they weeded out BUT the cases where Amber Alerts were issued in a timely manner, given the originally intended response, escalated in a logical way, and in response to a prove threat level. (Like Groene, Sarah Maynard, etc).

They just did a statistical abstraction of cases where police acted in the normal way using the normal assumptions.

If we dialed it back to original intent, the rate might be better yet.

Re:Low success rate?

[justinlee37]

However it sounds like the "under 18" part is a requirement of being credited as a "missing child," which plausibly would explain the large numbers of those reported missing, especially in comparison to how many amber alert has recovered.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this is a serious problem, the number you really want to look at is the number of unique children that are reported missing. A large number of the reported missing children are the same child reported more than once. Also, a large number of the missing children are "abducted" by a parent (maybe) without permission. Although also a serious problem, this probably falls into a different category than abducted by a stranger or wandered off.

  Also an Amber alert is different from a reported missing child.

Re:Low success rate?

[Andrew Cady]

Wow. I had a well crafted response but I realized it was a waste. I can't teach you human compassion in a slashdot comment..

Any level of effort spent posting to slashdot is justified, if you can teach just one person human compassion.

Re:Low success rate?

[Pharmboy]

Do you want to be the sheriff that didn't issue the Amber alert because you thought the child wasn't in imminent danger, or do you want to issue the alert "just to be safe"? I don't know the actual percentage of missing children cases that get bumped to Amber status, but I do know that most sheriff's are elected, and most elected officials want to cover their asses at all costs. Would be interesting to know actual percentages, however.

Re:Low success rate?

[hairyfeet]

Exactly, we have turned childhood into a siege mentality. When I was a kid once school let out you would walk across the street to the little food mart, not having to worry about traffic because somebody's mom or grandma was crossing guard that week, grab a coke or a bag of chips and laugh and talk for awhile. Then those that were within walking distance did so while those of us that weren't got picked up in the parking lot by a relative after they inevitably went into the store for some little something they forgot.

Now at both the elementary and middle school they have had to add another lane in both directions at great expense because the lines of cars were literally going back for miles, you have armed police with cruisers at BOTH exits at BOTH schools acting as security and crossing guards, again at great expense I'm sure. And finally the kids can't even interact with each other because they have to be kept single file to speed up delivery in order to keep the traffic flowing, and of course the number of kids being fat is getting nuts because the parents would rather have them playing the X360 than going outside where the bogeyman might snatch them.

Now it is pretty obvious to anyone with eyes the paranoia is doing more harm than good. The kids don't get enough time to socially interact anymore which sure isn't good for them mentally or emotionally, they don't get enough exercise because the constantly "Look out! They are after you!" atmosphere created by things like Amber alerts keeps the parents edgy enough they'd rather just let the kid sit at home in front of the TV or console, which in turn makes for a whole lot of fat kids which at that age is horrible for your health. It is any wonder things like juvenile diabetes and obesity is through the roof? Kids aren't even allowed outside anymore!

Re:Low success rate?

[pz]

So, based on just the actions of the program, it has only a 45/207 = 22% success rate. Still not what I would call stellar, nor something that would be expected to survive a budget tightening.

And, it would seem, the 800,000 missing children figure is an inflated number that is used for its ability to induce fear. Note that 800,000 children per year is about 0.3% (rounding) of the US population. My home town has 25,000 people in it; that would mean there are 75 missing children per year in that town. Assuming the demographic profile of that town is nominal, and therefore about 25% of the population is 18 or under (6250 children total), that means 12% of all children go missing every year. That's very hard to believe.

Re:Low success rate?

[TheGratefulNet]

lets face it - its a "feel good" thing for parents.

it may or may not do any direct good; but just like our security theater, its the appearance that something is being done, that counts.

go figure (?)

I don't like security theater and I don't like this inflated importance that we give kids. the world does not revolve around them.

Re:Low success rate?

[Locke2005]

How effective does it need to be? Would saving 1 child be worth the cost, or 10, or 100? Some would argue that if it helps any children at all, it is well worth it. I would argue it is more of an implication of the "many eyes makes all bugs shallow" philosophy of open source. Massively distributed human-based systems like this will probably be used to solve many more problems in the future, consider this to be a test run.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, no. OF course not. You prefer to call it man-boy love, right?

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like this inflated importance that we give kids. the world does not revolve around them.

Fortunately for grumpy old men who wander off from their nursing home, they've got "Silver Alerts".

Now stop telling me to get off my yard, I'm sure there's a nice orderly trying to do a headcount, looking for you.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an asshole. Put yourself in his shoes, you asocial fuck.

Re:Low success rate?

[coaxial]

Sure it's 525 children, but how many children have been recovered WITHOUT Amber Alert? That's the real question. Unless it's statistically significant, you are literally just as effective doing nothing. Actually, we already know this answer, and it's Amber Alert does nothing.

So we failed to reject the null hypothesis (that Amber Alerts are no more effective than not having Amber Alert). This that means that an effective Amber Alert needs to do something different from what they're already doing. Unfortunately, this announcement is just more of the same failed strategy. Think about it. I'm sitting at home, or perhaps at work. I check FB and see an amber alert. Now what? The roadside light signs at least catch people on the road telling them to look for a specific car. Alright. I can do that. I'm on the road. I can look for that. But when I get the Facebook Amber Alert, I'm not on the road. I'm at the computer. Oh sure, I could fish my phone out of my pocket if I happen to have a smartphone with push notifications enabled. and what not. But I doubt I'd bother, especially given the large number of status updates that the FB newsfeed pushes. So instead, when I get a chance, perhaps at lunch, or at home, I dig out my phone, go through the updates, and see that three hours ago, I should have looked for some car. And let's be honest about what "looking" means in this case. It means looking up from my Big Mac and staring out the nearest window for perhaps two seconds. It's not combing the neighborhood for hours, people just don't do that. They want to feel like they're helping, but not actually DO anything to actually help.

Re:Low success rate?

[TheGratefulNet]

where does it end? everyone with an issue or problem to solve gets to knock on my door and plead for help?

do NOT give me that 'think of the children' bullshit.

do NOT make me feel at all guilty for not caring about some temporarily lost child somewhere. yes, very likely the kid ran off or something not of 'evil intent'.

why is this parent's kid my problem? why does this parent get a free pass on broadcasting his problem to the world?

again, the feeling of self importance that parents often/usually have is what this is about.

the think-of-the-children crowd has worn out its welcome and we are TIRED of thinking about children. we really could care less - and you need to realize that fact. your problem is just that - YOUR problem. and we all have them. life sucks that way, you know?

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

And for the money, you could have installed pool covers on every pool in america and saved thousands.

But it just doesn't have that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you save a kid from their dad who decided to break the custody agreement.

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

betterunixthanunix seems to have no human compassion. I'm a father of two and do you think I would care about their success rates if they could save my kid? I don't think the other parents do either.

It is not a question of compassion, it is a question of whether or not the program has accomplished anything, and there is literally no evidence that AMBER alerts actually save children from harm. You say you do not care about success rates? Why not sacrifice small animals when children go missing? Why not cast stones? There is about as much empirical evidence for AMBER as there is for voodoo.

You can look it up yourself -- AMBER alerts almost always failed in cases where standard investigative techniques failed.

Re:Low success rate?

[cusco]

Putting "abducted" in quotes is right. My brother's nasty ex-wife reported that he had abducted their three kids because they got stuck in traffic and he got them to her house an hour late. Since the cop, who taking the report when they arrived, threatened to arrest the bitch if she filed a false report again it put an end to that particular bit of foolishness, but I'm sure those three were part of that year's 800,000.

Re:Low success rate?

[Stregano]

Apparently the half baby thing was only funny to me.

Re:Low success rate?

[h4rr4r]

Maybe it needs to be better than other uses of the money. If we have the option to save 525 kids lives via these dollars or 1000 kids lives by spending the money on road repairs or after school programs clearly we should be doing one of the latter.

Re:Low success rate?

[TheGratefulNet]

you feel that way because you are a father.

those of us who are not, do NOT feel like you do.

that is the difference.

compassion to you is not compassion to us. your whole world is your kid. for us, its just another noisy brat at a restaurant or movie theater.

there is no law (natural or man-made) that says we MUST love kids.

deal with the fact that your values != everyones.

Re:Low success rate?

[quantumpsych]

exactly, never underestimate the hysteria that parents are capable of.

Re:Low success rate?

[TheGratefulNet]

I keep saying this - how does this scale?

what qualifies as being worthy of bothering everyone for this one problem?

I have a problem - should I broadcast it hoping to find a solution. the problem is VERY important to me - who's to make the determination of whether its worth stopping everyone and their brother.

adults go missing - why not have alerts for them?

then eventually, we all just carry around lists of 'missing' people so that we all become unofficial cops.

yeah, that scales REAL well.

its too bad that some people go missing. a lot of things in life are extremly sad and a shame. broadcast is not the way to fix things, though.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one thing it does is...

suicide has now surpassed several other things as th second leading cause of death amongst teens.

Way to go "protectors of children". You're doing a great job.

Re:Low success rate?

[TheGratefulNet]

kids are being taught at an early age that 'mankind is basically out to get you'.

great lesson we teach our kids.

I was out at a store and some mother and her child were coming toward the entrance. her child was walking ahead of her and she grabbed his hand, looked right at me and said to her kid stranger danger!.

what the fuck! I hear that this is a phrase that they teach kids at school. but wtf - I was just standing near the door and she teaches her kid to be afraid of me?

I completely and totally blame the spinless breed of parents we have today. I really wonder what the generation will grow into.

there was no 'stranger danger' when I was a kid, some 40+ yrs ago. I don't look at 'strangers' and assume they're out to get me. what a warped way of looking at things; these parents are bringing up their kids like that.

Re:Low success rate?

[Randle_Revar]

Try 4chan instead

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

That figure includes kids in custody disputes. It's called sensationalizing, something that rarely ever happens when talking about child abduction.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say it was a baby.

Re:Low success rate?

[lewko]

Set yourself on fire. I promise not to give a shit.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have sex offenders so won the battle that a kid isn't safe walking less than

I'll stop you right there and say "No." Your kids are generally safe, but the news media takes every chance they can to plaster "Pedophile" across the headlines. Amber alerts are front page news, but when it turns out the kid was at a friend's house without phoning home that gets stuck in the back or not reported at all.

The phenomenon was first explained to me by my grandfather, when we were camping in the mountains one summer. My mind was on bears. He said "Look, when it's dark and you can't see anything very well, your mind makes up shapes where there are none. If you're looking for bears, you're going to see them even when there isn't a bear for a thousand miles."
Same thing here.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

there is no law (natural or man-made) that says we MUST love kids.

If that were true, the human race would never have got very far; if at least one parent of a child doesn't love it enough to feed it, keep it warm and safe and so on, you'd have a 100% infant mortality rate - human infants don't fend for themselves very well.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

exactly, never underestimate the hysteria that parents are capable of.

Wait til you have kids and see how fucking funny you think the idea of them being abducted is, twatbag..

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

Sadly, there is no law against being an arsehole. Still let's hope you're in trouble one day and need to rely on the kindness of strangers, you can send in photos of the shock on your face when they tell you to fuck off and die.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

Set yourself on fire. I promise not to give a shit.

Frankly, I wouldn't piss on him, unless I could piss gasoline.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

Who says those 500 children wanted to be found?

Having skimmed TFA, it seems that these AMBER alerts are for serious abduction cases, the name comes from a kid who neighbours saw being snatched and bundled into someone's truck (and later murdered).

They're not just for random runaways or kids visiting an estranged parent.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

Sports accidents, car accidents, cancer, poisoning, pool accidents, natural disasters. These are all substantially more risky to children than abduction

I really don't think that spending money is going to prevent accidents or natural disasters.

the 5000 kids who die of drowning in swimming pools each year don't make it on the evening news

You can only reduce this sort of thing by either (a) totally banning kids from swimming or (b) ensuring that teachers/carers/parents supervise their kids at all times. Good luck with either of those.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

My better idea is to take the same effort and focus it on something that will do more good and have fewer negative effects. A good example would be better enforcement of traffic laws near schools when kids are coming in and out of school.

That is simply a false dichotomy.

Why not do this as well?

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

The latest alert in this area was for a woman who told a guy to take her child with him when she let him borrow her car (assuming he would return the car with child instead of stealing it). She did not admit this to police until the next day. The incident was held up as an AMBER Alert success.

What is your point exactly? If the man had not returned the child by the next day, then the child had been kidnapped by any definition I can think of.

The stupidity of the parent is not the child's fault.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

I don't know about the money, but the "men are evil" stranger-danger attitude endangers children too. Most strangers are nice people. Most kidnappers and molestors are not strangers.

In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html

He must have been exceptionally thick, as well as being the only tradesman in the UK without a mobile phone.

Or, perhaps more likely, he just couldn't be arsed at the time, but realised he'd been spotted and had to come up with an excuse for acting like a cunt.

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

It's only altruistic if those 'others' are paying for it.

Altruism is not defined by, although for some people everything is measured by money.

"The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." (Oscar Wilde)

Re:Low success rate?

[tehcyder]

And for the money, you could have installed pool covers on every pool in america and saved thousands.

But it just doesn't have that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you save a kid from their dad who decided to break the custody agreement.

And what precisely is to stop the people owning those pools paying for fucking covers themselves? Just make it a law, like having car insurance, if it's really that much of a problem.

Re:Low success rate?

[FuckingNickName]

Having a child is the most selfish thing anyone can do.

When there are so many others who are in need, and when you have acknowledged that you have the resources to help another helppless human, you create a new one to use resources instead. And you leave existing humans to suffer.

While I have as much concern for a missing child as any other human in need, the parent is almost certainly a cunt. And you're castigating TheGratefulNet for not opening his door to someone he knew he couldn't help (maybe he is actively helping many of the other 6.9 billion) and who was demonstrably violent. You're a cunt too.

Re:Low success rate?

[Tragedy4u]

Being inefficient with tax payers money for a system that barely works, is not compassion. Could the money used used be put into an other program that could retrieve even more children.

I'd like to see what happens if you expressed your opinion on this system being an inefficient waste of money to the parent's who got their children back from this system. Seriously what price tag do you place on life? One child, allowed to grow up, has the potential to change the world.

Re:Low success rate?

[operagost]

Having a child is the most selfish thing anyone can do.

No, not really. For a population to even maintain its size requires every couple to produce over 2 two children. With the social programs in place in nearly every country in the first world, we need the population to continue growing in order to support our aged. So, unless you're big on human extinction or ageism or something, you're going to have to admit that having children is not entirely selfish. If you choose not to have kids, FINE. There's no need to attack others to affirm your own opinion.

Re:Low success rate?

[FuckingNickName]

No, not really. For a population to even maintain its size requires every couple to produce over 2 two children.

The average number of children is already more than two per couple, so that's been satisfied. The world's population is increasing.

With the social programs in place in nearly every country in the first world, we need the population to continue growing in order to support our aged.

No, we "need" government and private pension schemes to stop regarding money reserved for old age as something to invest in pork and yachts. We "need" to acknowledge that we're living longer and can work for longer. Don't trot out the third world absurdity of children being needed to look after the grandparents.

So, unless you're big on human extinction or ageism or something,

I'm not assuming that there's any imperative to cause the human race to continue. Or any need to cause it to become extinct. But no currently living human need suffer.

If you choose not to have kids, FINE. There's no need to attack others to affirm your own opinion.

An attack involves knives and such. I was offering an argument using the same tone provided by tehcyder to TheGratefulNet.

Re:Low success rate?

[box2]

Does a low success rate really deserve so much scorn? They are *trying* to do something good. Their daily job is the safe return of children. As apposed to say the multitudes of people who are only out for themselves or their own family. If one of those children they rescued from kidnapping was *your* child, would you not be thankful as all hell that someone cared enough to look for them on your behalf? Would you even be able to express the gratitude you felt?

Granted, all these arguments along the lines of "they could be doing better" are not wrong, but it seems that you are focusing from exactly the wrong angle. They may not add a significant value beyond what already exists for the amount of dollars spent, but including more people who are caring enough to be involved is absolutely not the wrong thing to do. Less modding up 'lolnoobs' comments and more 'this is how they could do more while spending less' would increase the value of *this* page.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have stopped either. For all I know, the kid could freak out over having a "scary stranger" trying to talk to it. In fact it's entirely possible that it would run into the street and get hit by a car. That would sure put the cherry on top of your Good Samaritan fantasy, wouldn't it?

it = mindless robot, programmed to run away from the scary strangers

You think that's a silly and improbable scenario? Not long ago I saw a news article about some guy who did try to stop and help some 5- or 6-year old kid who was standing in the middle of the street, and the kid ran away from him. IIRC he sent somebody else to chase it while he called 911 on his cell phone, but nobody ever found it. I assume that means it didn't get splattered by a bus, but I'm not sure whether to call that lucky or unlucky. I guess it'd be unlucky for the bus, at least.

I tried Google, really I tried, but all I could find was pages telling parents that they should program their little robot children to run away from strangers.

Re:Low success rate?

[trollertron3000]

LOL, that's my new signature.

Re:Low success rate?

[betterunixthanunix]

The problem is that the AMBER Alert system was created as the result of a moral panic -- a widespread belief that strangers who want to harm children are all over the place, waiting to kidnap an innocent child. If the AMBER Alert program was actually saving children from harm, I could shrug off the fact that it is symptomatic of a moral panic, because the benefits would outweigh the costs. Yet independent researchers have found that the system has done nothing to save children from harm, and that in cases where standard police techniques fail to rescue a child, AMBER alerts almost always fail. Worse, though, is that law enforcement agencies and politicians are parading AMBER as a system that is saving lives, which actually serves to reinforce the very moral panic that gave rise to AMBER in the first place.

The moral panic is really the problem here. As some have pointed out, most people will help a child who asks for help; kidnappers are extremely rare. Yet we are constantly telling children to never talk to strangers, and so a lost child might actually fail to ask for help from people who could offer it (perhaps by using a cell phone). Elsewhere in the comments, someone cited a case of a man who left a lost toddler out in the middle of nowhere, because he did not want to risk being labelled as a predator or kidnapper.

Finally, researchers have pointed out that if AMBER were used properly, it would not be very successful. In most cases, when a child is kidnapped by someone who intends to do the child harm, the kidnapper harms the child before the police have a chance to determine that the case meets the criteria for an AMBER alert. This trend is reflected by the evidence that AMBER alerts fail to save lives in cases where standard police techniques fail.

So, while the tiny handful of parents who got lucky and had their children saved by an AMBER alert would probably disagree, I would say that all of the time, energy, and money that went into the AMBER system could be better spent on something else.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that all the pedophiles responsible for the missing children lured them using facebook to begin with.

Re:Low success rate?

[Locke2005]

I do have a kid and I do experience a sense of panic when I don't know where she is. Nevertheless, any rational consideration would conclude that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than having your child abducted by a stranger -- and I yell at my wife for buying lottery tickets. In other words, there is a boatload of things that would be more important for a parent to worry about than their child being abducted, most of them involving your child's poor judgement.

Re:Low success rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I AM a father, and I'm also not a fan of the AMBER Alert system. I too find it inefficient.

ffffrirrrrist psssssot

[Noogie Brown]

ohhhh yeah I am king of the world!

bad apostrophy

[martas]

and bad '-'. seriously, law-enforcement?

Re:bad apostrophy

[asylumx]

Thanks! I noticed those too and thought I'd have to be the grammar nazi again. Glad I'm not the only one!

Re:bad apostrophy

[blueg3]

"Law-enforcement agency" is correct but uncommon. It's an agency for law enforcement, not a law "enforcement agency". "Law enforcement" is a compound modifier, so it gets a hyphen.

Re:bad apostrophy

[Anonymous Coward]

compound modifier

FB/AMBER

[maxrate]

Refreshing to see when tech is being used for good. I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but this elevates my opinion of the legitimate use of the website.

Re:FB/AMBER

[Stregano]

Well FB also has the "hacker" cup, which is more of just a programming tournament where you provide all of your information from person phone number down to your home address. I mean, for a "hacker" cup, giving FB all of your personal information has got to give you another legitimate use of the site

Re:FB/AMBER

[maxrate]

I don't even have an account !

Re:FB/AMBER

[Randle_Revar]

Really? This lowers my opinion of FB, difficult as that is at this point. There is nothing good about partnering with a system that barely does anything, wastes money, and adds to America's culture of fear and paranoia.

I wouldn't want

[McTickles]

to be TAKEN like Maddie. God forbid I ever go out again

The "low" number is misleading.

[Lashat]

Most of the reported missing children are parental abductions and AMBER alert is usually not needed in those cases. LE usually knows where to locate the parent AMBER alert is significant in tracking and finding stranger abductions. Sorry I don't have the more granular detailed numbers.

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[betterunixthanunix]

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[Stradenko]

If you can get by the terrible 3-D excel charts, the numbers are moderately interesting. 72% of the issued amber alerts in 2009 were for parental abductions (Table 9, pg 20), so your conclusion is wrong. See also table 15, pg 29.

http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[PRMan]

From the article:

Their successes were generally in child custody fights that didn't pose a risk to the child. And in those rare instances where kidnappers did intend to rape or kill the child, Amber Alerts usually failed to save lives...."If a mom is told by a court she can't see her kid, doesn't trust her husband, and abducts the child, it's stretching reason to say we need an Amber Alert to save the kid's life," Griffin argues. He cites studies showing that, even before Amber Alert's existence, 70 percent of parental abduction cases were resolved in less than a week.

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[PRMan]

Or, in other words, 3/4 of the time there is a good degree of probability that the Amber Alert system is being used as a pawn in a custody dispute. I heard one situation where a scornful ex-wife asked the ex-husband to do her a favor by watching the kids and then reported him to Amber Alert, had him arrested and jailed awaiting trial, showing the officers the court order that he had taken them during "her time".

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[Lashat]

You are correct. After reading the various links of stats family vs non-family suspect is not a determining factor in the decision on whether or not to issue an alert. Thanks for the PDF.

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[tehcyder]

Or, in other words, 3/4 of the time there is a good degree of probability that the Amber Alert system is being used as a pawn in a custody dispute. I heard one situation where a scornful ex-wife asked the ex-husband to do her a favor by watching the kids and then reported him to Amber Alert, had him arrested and jailed awaiting trial, showing the officers the court order that he had taken them during "her time".

Bullshit, when there is a custody agreement, it's not like a shared restraining order with each parent given a time slot during which the other can't get near the children.

If parent A is supposed to have the kids for the weekend abut gets flu, s/hey can let parent B have them by mutual agreement with no problem. There is no criminal behaviour involved just because parent B now has the children at the "wrong" time.

Re:The "low" number is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

This got Interesting+1 for "I heard one situration.." with a pretty singular case and not even a Snopes link? One of the two is getting jail/fine if the situation is accurate, so I'd love a link.

And this is just the first step

[Minwee]

Once phase one is complete and AMBER alert bulletins are being sent via facebook they will be able to move on to phase two, where every bulletin will trigger the creation of a "Bring Back (name here)" group and send an invitation to everyone else in the world to join it.

Re:And this is just the first step

[Nimey]

Also a game for rescuing abducted children.

Re:And this is just the first step

[Overzeetop]

"Your friend James found a child wandering onto his farm!"

Re:And this is just the first step

[Qzukk]

"Cops spot James alone with a child on his farm and arrest him!"

Do those numbers make sense?

[Anonymous Coward]

800,000?

There's about 300,000,000 people in the US. Say 25% are 'children'. 800,000/75,000,000 is just over 1%. Do 1% of children go missing every year? Or, do 15% of children go missing by their fifteenth birthday? I suspect there's some statistical inflation here, or they define seventeen-year-olds who take off for a few weeks as 'children'.

Re:Do those numbers make sense?

[Amorymeltzer]

Some interesting stats from the FBI:

As of December 31, 2007, there were 105,229 active missing person records in NCIC. Juveniles under the age of 18 accounted for 54,648 (51.93%) of the records, and 12,362 (11.75%) were for juveniles between the ages of 18 and 20.

During 2007, 814,967 missing person records were entered into NCIC, a decrease of 2.53% from the 836,131 records entered in 2006. Missing person records cleared or canceled during the same period totaled 820,212. Reasons for these removals include: the subject was located by a law enforcement agency; the individual returned home; or the record had to be removed by the entering agency due to a determination that the record was invalid.

In 2007, there were 518 records entered as Abducted by a Stranger; 299,787 entered as Runaway; and 2,919 entered as Abducted by Non-Custodial Parent. This only accounts for 303,224 entries of the 418,967 entered, or 72.4%, which is an increase from 297,632 entries of the 836,131 entered, or 35.6%, in 2006.

Re:Do those numbers make sense?

[icebike]

Good post.

there were 105,229 active missing person records in NCIC.

So the flow through is rather high, but 7 out of 8 are cleared withing the same year.

And the age group includes people up to 20!, which means that you can probably inflate the 300 thousand REPORTED to be runaways with at least that many again which in fact left by choice and returned later, or simply wanted to change their life.

One wonders how many of the 105K also fall into this category, (left by choice) or simply never get reported as being found.

This is heavy in assumption....

[Anonymous Coward]

This only has value if the majority of people active on facebook are actually engaged with the outside world away from the console/internet world. A nice venture nonetheless.

I must be wrong...

[airdweller]

800 thou is almost 0.3% of the total US population, isn't it?
0.3% the total US population goes missing every year?! WTF?!

Re:I must be wrong...

[tehcyder]

800 thou is almost 0.3% of the total US population, isn't it? 0.3% the total US population goes missing every year?! WTF?!

It's probably still less than the percentage "abducted by aliens."

Facebook should opt everyone in

[Jaxim]

>Facebook users are able to sign up to receive AMBER Alert bulletins... I actually think that facebook should do the facebook thing and opt everyone into this automatically. And if a facebook user doesn't want to be alerted to the AMBER alerts, then they can opt out. It might be more effective if everyone is opted into this program.

Re:Facebook should opt everyone in

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Except, if they do that, then hundreds of thousands of users will have new bulletins from this "weird Amber alert thingy" that they never signed up for and, rather than investigate, they will simply ignore it, opt out, or block it. I suppose the same end would probably be reached as an opt in program, eventually. But really, if you want people to actually notice this new facebook feature, it is better to advertise it and then have them consciously seek it out and pick it. At least, that would be my guess.

Re:Facebook should opt everyone in

[Jaxim]

I still think it would be more effective if people were opted into this program. Perhaps whenever they see the alert, they will see a question next to the alert that asks if they wish to opt in/out of this program in the future. If they don't answer, then they'll continue to get the alerts AND asked to opt in/out. Alternatively facebook can place the alerts in the left/right column so it is not directly in the news feed.

Re:Facebook should opt everyone in

[Jaxim]

However, if you can forward the amber alert to your friends, then people who didn't opt into the program would still see the alert. But again, in this one case, I personally think Facebook should opt everyone into the program.

Just a few more cameras on street corners...

[orphiuchus]

...with facial recognition software, and they can just pm the abductor to bring the kid back.

Re:Just a few more cameras on street corners...

[orphiuchus]

Woa, woa, wtf? Overrated? Whats wrong with that post? It hadn't even been modded up!

Errr estimated number of reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would this need to be estimated, either a report was made or it wasn't

it's like me looking at my hands counting my 8 fingers and 2 thumbs then saying I estimate that I have about a dozen fingers.

What the fuck.

Not again!

[dr_dank]

"My grandmother used to think the Amber alert was the same girl. Every time we pass it: 'oye hijo a la chingada Amber got into another car today....'" - George Lopez

Re:Not again!

[Anonymous Coward]

"My grandmother used to think the Amber alert was the same girl. Every time we pass it: 'oye hijo a la chingada Amber got into another car today....'" - George Lopez

I didn't know George Lopez employed profanity in his stand-up material. Presumably the other half of the joke here is to suppose his Mexican-American(?) grandmother would use such language.

They forgot the most important feature...

[arshadk]

which automatically changes the abductor's fb status to " *abductor's name* has just abducted *abductee's name* "

screw websites, go with browsers

[corbettw]

An Amber Alert browser add-on for Firefox would be able to alert Firefox users no matter what website they're using.

Re:screw websites, go with browsers

[modi123]

Sooooo like this? Amber Alert 0.4.4

Re:screw websites, go with browsers

[corbettw]

Yeah, exactly like that! Now all we need is someone to actually create it.

Rather have SMS than have to login to FB

[countSudoku()]

You can get SMS messages Amber Alerts already from:
https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org/index.jsp

Having to login to facebook is a waste of time, when you can get the same info from roadside display systems, or via free SMS. It's nice the FB is participating, of course (good for them), but this info is already available in a better to digest system, without the FB GUI getting in the way.

Re:Rather have SMS than have to login to FB

[DerekLyons]

Assuming you use SMS (I don't, quite a few of the older people I know don't but do use Facebook), or are on the road where a sign happens to be (all three of them in my county, precisely none anywhere I normally drive)...

Putting them on Facebook (which I'm already logged in on) in a GUI I already use (and is thuse hardly 'in the way') isn't a waste of time, it's a good thing. (Or, less charitably, don't use a good thing as a springboard for a rant against Facebook.)

Apostrophe error

[RealGrouchy]

It looks like it's a vestigial apostrophe that applied to text removed in an edit. The original submission referred to "broadcaster's group's".

- RG>

Children are 'abducted' by their own parents

[flyingfsck]

Most of these 800,000 are children who move across state lines with a divorced parent. The root problem is that the courts award children to the wrong parent - almost always the mother. Frequently, the mother is the cause of the whole problem and the children do not want to live with her.

AlienGonzales

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi guys, I'm new to slash"." so i'm testing out the comment system!

catapostrophe

[toby]

And they said literacy was dead.

Amber Alerts: Corwin

[aapold]

Corwin was last seen after the patternfall war heading for a social function in the Courts of Chaos. He was wearing his typical black and silver garb with a rose boorch, and his blade Grayswandir. If you have any information on his whereabouts please contact Random.

Caine - Caine was last seen walking down a street in Kashfa, heading to a coffee shop. He was wearing black and green, with a rakish hat and feather, and had his jeweled daggers. Note - he has been known to fake dissappearances before.

Fiona - Fiona was last seen in Amber the night Merlin returned, at the main dinner. There are unconfirmed reports that she was later seen at a nightclub in rural upstate New York, and stole a small sedan from a parking lot there. She was wearing a green and lavender dress.

Bleys - Bleys has also been missing since the night Fiona vanished in Amber, they may have left together. Since there a man matching his description was seen on security camera footage selling several expensive rings in a pawn shop in Las Vegas. He was wearing a snazzy red and orange blazer.

Only on mobile FB

[Eyezen]

I always thought amber alerts on TV were strange...i mean unless said child walked up to my front door what good would it do while I'm sitting in my lazy boy. Sorta the same with this except for the mobile phone version, but like others have said you can already get SMS alerts.

Privacy Alert

[Kazoo the Clown]

Just a lame excuse for Facebook to track YOUR location. Don't fall for it. An Amber alert near you "needs" to know where you are.

Re:Privacy Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Your a jackass.

Surprised it's voluntary

[RollingThunder]

When I saw the title in my feed, I immediately wondered how much of a pain in the ass this would be for me, getting Amber alerts for the US while I'm in Canada, given FB's track record of implementations.

Honestly surprised and pleased that it's a subscription thing, although it just being yet another app you can subscribe to makes me wonder why it's /. newsworthy.

525 recovered via Amber Alert?

[mschaffer]

"525 children recovered" Does anyone know the basis of this statistic? Do they simply claim that, since an Amber alert was issued, if the person is found it must be the result of the Amber alert, regardless of its relevance to the recovery? Also, how may amber alerts have been issued or what is their success rate?

Just curious.

Re:525 recovered via Amber Alert?

[bws111]

Have a look at http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf - it has all kinds of statistics. For instance, in 2009 there were 207 Amber Alerts issued. There were 166 recoveries in those cases. Of those, 45 were counted as 'success stories' directly attributable to the alert. 16 recoveries were because an individual or law enforcement recognized the vehicle from the alert. 12 were because the abductor heard the alert and released the child. 6 were because an individual knew the whereabouts of the abductor and called authorities, etc.

Re:525 recovered via Amber Alert?

[mschaffer]

Thanks!

Re:525 recovered via Amber Alert?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were 166 recoveries in those cases. Of those, 45 were counted as 'success stories' directly attributable to the alert. 16 recoveries were because an individual or law enforcement recognized the dad's vehicle. 12 were because the kid's dad heard the alert and released the child out onto the street, because oh fuck the radio said that the cops are looking for me? the ex just said she wanted me to watch them for the afternoon. 6 were because an individual knew where the dad lived and called authorities, etc.

FTFY.

so obama pulls fbi off missing kids

[Anonymous Coward]

to look after ip issues so that facebook can do it?
i see

800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[Omnifarious]

If we were to take that number seriously, it would mean that at least 1 in 7 people experience a kidnapping during their childhood. When you're coming up with statistics to support a position, please make at least a vague attempt to use a relevant statistic instead of some random trumped up value that sounds good?

I would like to know the actual number of children kidnapped per year in the US. It would be an interesting statistic and highly relevant to the announcement they made.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading problems? Nowhere does it say 800000 kidnappings, it says 800000 children under age 18 REPORTED MISSING, which includes all runaways, etc.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[PRMan]

I know thousands of people, but only know a few that had a custody dispute or ran away for a while or something that could even be construed as this, maybe 10 or so.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[nprz]

I'd like to know how many AMBER alerts have been issued during the timeframe where 525 children were safely recovered.

800k children reported missing a year means 1.5 children every second, which would generate quite a bit of spam on FB if they were updated there.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[Omnifarious]

Yes, this is true, but how is that number in any way at all related to the Amber Alerts? My argument isn't that the number is wrong (which it may very well be), but that it's obviously irrelevant to what the press release is talking about.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[kramerd]

As has been stated several times, reported missing does not equal kidnapped. 800k is about 1% of 'children,' which refers to anyone under the age of 18.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[Omnifarious]

1% * 17 (number of years someone is a child) = 17%. This means more than 1 in 6 children. If it were reporting on kidnapped, that would be a ridiculous statistic. It's a scare number statistic designed to make someone who isn't attentive and critical think the number who are kidnapped is much, much, much worse than it really is.

My point wasn't that the number was bogus. The fact that it is is completely obvious. My point is, why are they reporting a bogus number at all? That number has nothing to do with amber alerts. Nothing whatsoever. Why even bother stating it?

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[kramerd]

The 800k number is not bogus, it is the number of children reported missing. It is factual and accurate, which is why the number is reported.

It is what is commonly referred to as a relevant statistic. This is similiar to how it is relevant to look at how many licensed vehicles are on the road when looking at how many traffic accidents occur in an area.

Re:800000 is a totally bogus and irrelevant number

[Omnifarious]

It is what is commonly referred to as a relevant statistic. This is similiar to how it is relevant to look at how many licensed vehicles are on the road when looking at how many traffic accidents occur in an area.

It's more like going to someplace in India and referring to the number of people in an area talking about the number of traffic accidents involving cars. It's basically a nearly completely irrelevant statistic that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the article.

Soure please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is not a source.

AND! Crimestoppers!

[rueger]

I submitted a story about Crimestoppers having a Facebook page! I can't believe the Eds didn't run it!

They also didn't run my story about Block Parents having a FB page, or Neighbourhood Watch, or Big Sisters!

Abduction and the bystander effect

[Krishnoid]

Even when a kid is ostensibly being abducted by a stranger, a lot of people won't respond. So I wonder how AMBER could be made more effective to compensate for this effect (assuming it's real).

No one is winning.

[fyngyrz]

Have sex offenders so won the battle that a kid isn't safe walking less than 1000 feet from the schoolhouse door to the door of the home that parents are that fearful?

For sex offenders to "win", they'd want easier access, not more difficult. Presuming (and I think it's a false presumption) that there was any significant risk here in the first place. No one benefits from this, it is purest insanity.

I am *profoundly* glad I grew up in the 1950's-1960's. I am quite certain there were just as high a percentage of pedophiles and ephibophiles around then, as now (based on population), but no one ever forced me into anything I didn't want to do, or even attempted to. Nor did I hear about anything like that happening to anyone else. I wandered all over multiple towns, rode my bike from town to town (about 20 miles in various directions), I floated and boated the Delaware river, sometimes for days at a time, I camped out by myself and with friends, I took trips to dark sky locations and fiddled with telescopes, I wandered around town late at night both as a kid and as a teenager - that's right, no curfew - I had a great time, learned a lot, was physically very active (although not sports, per se: I swam, I went caving, I rowed, I just walked and biked a lot of places, I climbed trees (I built a tree house, well, a platform, about 50 feet off the ground in our back yard... long climb, but what a view... used to eat a bag lunch my mom would make for me up there. She'd wave from the porch.) I built dams in the creek, rafted in the rapids above Port Jervis... that's how a kid should grow up. Not locked in the house, stuck in front of the babble box, forbidden to circle the block or cross the street.

To re-imagine my youth in the vein of modern parental hysteria... that's truly a nightmare. I pity this generation, really anyone who experienced their childhood and teenage years in this environment of political and social insanity.

Re:No one is winning.

[cusco]

And the kids who still want to go outside to play get fed really powerful psychoactive drugs to zone them out. I grew up ten years later than you and am equally glad it wasn't today since my mom would have fallen for the hype. Some kid my nephew went to school with ended up in the emergency room because he'd eaten an earthworm on a dare. Yeesh.

Re:No one is winning.

[torgis]

At my daughter's middle school they have "lockdown drills" the way the kids of the 50's had to endure the "duck and cover" drills.

Essentially, they make an announcement over the PA system that an intruder has been detected in the school. All of the doors are steel and lockable, so the student closest to the door has the responsibility to jump up and lock the door as quickly as possible. Then they all cower along the wall out of the line of fire should anyone try to shoot through the door.

To top off this lunacy, school employees come around and bang on the doors and shout to be let in. I wish I were joking, but I'm not. They actually go around and bang on every single door and beg, demand, and plead to be let into the room. The kids are taught not to let anyone in for any reason until the lockdown is lifted.

So yes, it has come to this.

Better than ~500 0

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, If the AMBER alert system is responsible for 1 rescued child it's worth it. This partnership with FB is a great idea and I don't see a negative. Unless the fact that it costs money is perceived as negative. But I'm not interested in a cost/child argument because the two are incomparable to me.

800,000 missing? sounds like bollocks

[angel'o'sphere]

How can in a country with 300 million inhabitants every year 800,000 children be reported missing?
300 years and every child is gone ... 100 years and a 1/3rd of all children is gone, 10 years and every 30ths ... that is more than 3 of 100 is gone.
Hello .... that is bullshit.

angel'o'sphere

Lulz

[lewko]

Standby for reports of missing children named Rick Astley being broadcast over Facebook.

er... yes...

[Tom]

525 (in total) of 800,000 (per year). Introduced in 1996, that's 14 years, so 37.5 per year (on average) out of 800,000 per year. That is a fantastic

0.0047 % success rate

Absolutely something we all desperately need to know about.

Re:Amber Alerts: Corwin

[Anonymous Coward]

You win all the internets.