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Comment by cpeterso | Hacker News Reader

The FBI should use Facebook and RSS to crowdsource manhunts. California has "Amber Alerts" for abducted children that are announced on TV, radio, and highway signs. But the FBI might be able to get more eyeballs Facebook and RSS feeds announcing with photos of missing people or wanted criminals. They could have national, state, and local feeds so people can choose fewer but closer announcements.

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I literally thought about building a Facebook app like this not more than an hour ago. This is definitely something that should be built, I wonder how difficult it would be to get the data out of the police departments...

Seeing as facebook can now recognise faces and auto tag those in uploaded photos, I wonder if that could be put to use to have a report/help dialogue pop up (verifying information like location/date) if someone who was reported missing appears in a new photograph.

There was something similar I was thinking about, Amber Alerts are generally set for a certain area, cell carriers in that area could be notified and send out a free MMS that contains name, license plate info, car make and model and stuff like that to a specific area thereby alerting everyone in a specific area as to what is happening.

This should allow people to be more vigilant and people are more likely to be paying attention to incoming messages on their phones than on FB whereby I have to be logged in first.

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