AMBER
Alerts for
missing children **w in
Google Search and Maps
Today we are launching
AMBER Alerts coordinated by the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the
Google Public Alerts platform. Public
Alerts are designed to bring you emergency
Alerts when and where they’re relevant to you, and
AMBER Alerts aim to help bring abducted
children home safely.
If you’re using
Google Search or
Maps on desktop and mobile you’ll see an
AMBER Alert if you
Search for related information in a particular location where a child has recently been abducted and an alert was issued. You’ll also see an alert if you conduct a targeted
Search for the situation. By increasing the availability of these
Alerts through our services, we hope that more people will assist in the
Search for
children featured in
AMBER Alerts and that the rates of safe recovery will rise.
AMBER
Alerts will provide information about the abducted child and any other details about the case as they become available. Additional details could include the make and model of the vehicle he/she was abducted in or information about the alleged abductor.
Screenshot for a test version of an AMBER alert
The US Department of Justice’s
AMBER Alert™ Program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies and others to engage the entire community in the most serious child-abduction cases. We are working with the NCMEC, who will provide the
AMBER Alert data to
Google and make it possible to display information in Public Alerts.
We’re working closely with
Missing Children Europe and the
Canadian Centre for Child Protection to try and scale this service to more countries. We’ll keep exploring different ways to improve child protection through in**vative tech**logies, like what has been used to
reduce exploitation and
improve reporting to NCMEC.
Posted by Phil Coakley, software engineer,
Google Public
Alerts team
AMBER Alerts for missing children **w in Google Search and Maps