Facebook To Have Amber Alerts For Missing Kids

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

U.S. Facebook users will now be able to receive AMBER Alerts — the notifications issued when a child is abducted — on the social network, the result of a new partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Details of the new program were made available Wednesday morning, one day before the 15th anniversary of the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, whom the alert system was named after.

Facebook (Facebook) has set up 53 AMBER Alert pages — one for each of the 50 states, along with pages for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. Interested Facebook users will be able to sign up for alerts pertinent to their individual states. The notifications, which will appear on news feeds as they’re issued, can also be shared with users’ Facebook friends. 

 

An AMBER Alert or a Child Abduction Emergency (SAME code: CAE) is a child abduction alert bulletin in several countries throughout the world, issued upon the suspected abduction of a child, since 1996. AMBER is officially a backronym for "America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response" but was originally named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old child who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas in 1996. 

Once law enforcement determines that a child has been abducted and the abduction meets AMBER Alert criteria, law enforcement issues an AMBER Alert and notifies broadcasters and state transportation officials. AMBER Alerts interrupt regular programming and are broadcast on radio and television and on highway signs. AMBER Alerts can also be issued on lottery tickets, wireless devices such as mobile phones, and over the Internet.

According to the official AMBER Alert website, 525 missing children have been recovered via the system.