How the United States locates lost kids

14 September 2008

A child-safety group came up with the "Missing Children Screensaver" project last month. The application draws on idle computer power to display updated news, information and photos of missing or abducted children. Each time the screensaver kicks in, it updates the contents providing the latest information available.

- The National Child Safety Council in the US initiated the "Missing Children Milk Carton Programme" more than 20 years ago. Photographs and biographies of missing children are placed on hundreds of millions of milk carton side panels, bringing the faces and information of abducted children to countless Americans.

- A tool named "Missing Children -- the Online Milk Carton" on the social networking website, Facebook, features the five latest children reported missing in Canada, the US or United Kingdom.

- The "AMBER Alert Programme", named after 9-year-old kidnap and murder victim Amber Hagerman, is a partnership between law enforcement agencies, broadcasters and transportation agencies to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases, much like how information is spread during severe weather emergencies. Descriptions of the abducted child and suspected abductor will be broadcast to the community. Since its inception 12 years ago, it has registered 421 successful recoveries.

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