If you see an AMBER alert on the news, you will see it, and probably forget about it. You might see one on a site like www.woot.com but that is in a different state. Chances are you WONT REMEMBER IT.
Yet an application that can show you amber alerts for you current location would actually improve the chance that people would actually memorize the important faces and can always refer back to them immediately when seeing the child and boom press a button to submit a sighting or call immediately.
The fact that the information is readily available might be the missing key. Until now unless the picture is posted all over your neighborhood, you will have no idea that you just passed the abducted child.
The point is, this application has nothing but good intentions to the public good in mind, is free, is developed by volunteers, and can potentially do a lot of good in America... yet it is delayed for quite some time just because of apple's monopolizing process. The letter mostly points out that the apple store's only reason for being used is because there is no alternative, if one comes out or other platforms, it will be discarded because of apple's poor policies. The application is not perfect and the AMBER system in general has many theoretical flaws which are quite real even if given informational access through this app, but its not like this guy is making a profit from it.