Facebook aims to find missing kids

Facebook is rolling out a new tool that it hopes will make it easier for police to find lost and kidnapped childen.

The social media giant on Tuesday is announced a new plan to post Amber Alerts for missing children on the news feed of people who may be nearby.

{mosads}Facebook has already been used to help find missing children, and the formal collaboration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — which runs the Amber Alert program — will only build on those organic actions, company officials said.  

“We know the chances of finding a missing child increase when more people are on the lookout – especially in the first few hours,” Emily Vacher, who runs Facebook’s global safety policy, wrote in a post on the site. “Our goal is to help get these alerts out to the people who are in the best position to help and encourage them to spread the word by sharing the National Center’s missing child poster with their friends.”

Under the new program, Amber Alerts distributed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will appear near the top of a Facebook user’s news feed, with an option for them to learn more information — such as what number to call if they have information about the case — and share it with others. The alert will only go to people within a certain geographic area of where the child is believed to be, based on where users set their Facebook location as well as analysis of their check-ins, Internet protocol (IP) addresses and any other location information that they already share with the company.

There are reasons to believe the effort could be effective.

In her post, Vacher pointed to a story from last March where a motel employee helped police find a missing 11-year-old girl whose father checked in after allegedly killing the girl’s mother and kidnapping her. The motel worker called the police after seeing an alert on Facebook.

Facebook has also been crucial in helping to recover a Canadian newborn abducted from a hospital last May and a kidnapped 7-year-old girl in California last January.

Already, the move is earning praise from Capitol Hill.

“Minutes matter in the search for a missing child,” Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who had been briefed about the new feature, said in a statement to The Hill. “Quickly getting information out to the public is one of the most important things that can be done when a child goes missing and Facebook is uniquely positioned to help do that.”

The Facebook feature, she added, “will make a big difference in bringing more children home.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who had also been briefed about the move, said it will bring “thousands of pairs of eyes to each search effort.”

“Facebook’s integration of localized Amber Alerts into its news feed is a welcome, appreciated, and substantial gesture of partnership, and it will make an enormous difference in the effort to find children who have gone missing,” he added. 

In addition to Facebook, search engine Bing is also taking steps to allow people to access Amber Alert information through its searches.

Combined, the tools should are “extending our web of child protection resources into new and critical areas,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement, while urging other companies to follow suit. 

— Updated at 10:20 a.m.