Data Call Makes Free Amber Alerts Feed Available To Content Feed Subscribers

May 27, 2021 by Dave Haynes

Houston’s Data Call Technologies has pulled together the data feeds and underlying data collection toolset to create a real-time Amber Alert feed, working on collaboration with the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The Amber Alert feeds are free of charge to existing and new subscribers of Data Call’s digital signage infotainment content distribution platform, DLManager.

People in the U.S. and Canada are very familiar with Amber Alerts – a notification system for abducted children that launched in 1996, in response to the abduction and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Texas, Amber Hagerman. The Amber acronym also stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.

Says Data Call in PR:

We know a child’s chances for a safe recovery are greater when resources are mobilized quickly. Data Call’s DLManager content distribution system will aid to ensure a rapid response in the first critical hours after a child goes missing, by enabling thousands of additional public digital video displays (digital signage) to feature profiles of missing children from NCMEC’s database that will update automatically based on each display’s location.

As digital signage continues to expand its presence in shopping malls, waiting rooms, banks, hotels, restaurants, schools, and small businesses, the utilization of this vast connected network of screens to expand the visibility of these children and hopefully return them home is well worth the initiative. Getting information about a missing child to people in the very locality in which they were abducted or last seen is key.

As of December 2020, 1,029 children have been rescued and brought safely home specifically because of AMBER Alerts.

“As the world continues to rely on technology and receipt of information in digital form, it becomes more imperative for us to seek out and utilize the best possible ways to engage the public,” says John Bischoff, Vice President of NCMEC’s Missing Children Division. “Data Call’s broad reach of digital signage will help us sending out these alerts

“While Data Call is not the first to provide this free resource to our industry, we truly believe that the introduction of this to our clients and network partners could help make a difference in bringing a child home. I am grateful to the team members of NCMEC, AMBER, and our staff members to make this system available,” says Data Call’s CEO, Tim Vance.