Tech Has Transformed How We Find Missing Children

A former Manhattan store owner confessed Thursday morning to strangling 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 — the boy whose disappearance sparked the now-famous face on the milk carton.

If you can't remember the last time you saw someone's face on a milk carton, or never even heard of the concept, there's a reason: Technology and social media have drastically changed how we search for abducted persons.

Police are still investigating the Patz case and have yet to confirm whether the Manhattan man's alleged confession will lead to anything new. But its resurgence has brought attention to the methods now being used to find those who go missing, as well as the future of these alert systems.

Amber Alerts, named after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, kidnapped and murdered in 1996, are the most well-known source of alerts about missing children. They are most frequently broadcasted on traffic signs, as well as radio and TV.

In January 2011, Amber Alerts came to Facebook when the social network teamed up with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Facebook set up 53 different Amber Alert pages, one for each of the 50 states, as well as pages for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.

Meanwhile, mobile apps to help track down missing persons are multiplying. Family Tracker, for example, allows parents to keep track of the whereabouts of their children and helped a mother from Atlanta, Georgia, find her lost son earlier this year.

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Yet even with the availability of apps and Amber Alerts on social media, they are still passive alert systems, according to Morgan Wright, Chief Crime Fighter of Crowd Sourced Investigations, a soon to be launched website helping to connect law enforcement with social networks.

"The most important thing it [an alert] has to do is create awareness. If I don't see the information, I can't act on it," Wright told Mashable in a recent interview.

But unless someone is already actively using an app like Family Tracker, for example, or happens to follow Amber Alerts on Facebook or Twitter, he has no way of finding this information from technology or social media alone.

And even with Amber Alerts, says Wright, there's only one agency in each state that has the authority to release what will eventually become an Amber Alert. That means that an Amber Alert itself is something that is very specific.

Missing person alert systems, Wright says, must evolve to become "more rapid, and accelerate public safety by being accessible on demand."

In other words, instead of a person clicking on an app or on a Facebook status to look up missing person information, something like push notifications to cellphones might be more effective — because an emergency can happen at any time, not just because someone might be thinking about it during a given moment.

But Wright is the first to admit the obvious — push notifications "relies upon those folks registering to receive those alerts."

The next step, then, would be for these alerts to become mandated by law. The question is, will the law or policy allow that?

Federal officials announced earlier this month that emergency alerts by text message — including Amber Alerts — would come to some cellphone users in New York and Washington in the event of a national or regional emergency.

There is no word yet on whether other states will adopt the alert system. This still doesn't offer much help to local officers, unless they have a case that's garnered national attention.

That's where Wright sees Crowd Sourced Investigations filling in. "What we offer law enforcement is what they can't have at the federal level — networks of networks," he told Mashable.

Crowd Sourced Investigations will require people to log in with their Facebook information. Then, if an emergency does occur, Crowd Sourced Investigations will be able to tap into a person's identifying factors, such as schools attended or interests — which will inevitably help the organization tap into a person's networks.

Wright admits privacy concerns, especially with a Facebook login, might be an obstacle. "We have to be very judicious about getting your private information," he said.

The priority, however, is to identify influencers and start a domino effect.

For abducted children and other emergencies, "the thing that helps you the most is the ability to generate immediate awareness throughout the community of interest," Wright said.

With social media and technology expanding that notion of community, the ability to take alert information and bring it into a digital network is key.

The Crowd Sourced Investigations website is expected to launch within the next two months.

Would you participate in Crowd Sourced Investigations? Do you have other ideas to help spread awareness for missing persons? Let us know in the comments.