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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."
525 children in total...when 800000 are reported missing each year? I think this program is going to need more than Facebook...
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
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.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
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
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.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
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.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
"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.
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.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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".
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
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).