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A contact forwarded this info. to me and I thought a lot of people / parents may find this of interest and hopefully useful. Please share this information with anyone you know who may be interested. Thank you!
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Amy
FBI app to ID kids has parents’ thumbs-up
Free cellphone aid stores photos, more in case of emergency
By Stephanie Czekalinski
The Columbus Dispatch Sunday August 21, 2011 7:08 AM
The FBI introduced a smartphone application this month to help parents and law-enforcement agencies find a child who disappears.
The application stores basic information — photo, a physical description and contact information — on iPhones and iPads, making it possible for parents to quickly email that information to police, friends and relatives in an emergency.
“This is handy,” said Renee Crighton, 32, who reviewed the app at Cafe Brioso Downtown last week while her 4-year-old son had a cookie and a glass of milk.
Having the information on your phone makes it more accessible if your child disappears while you’re out with him or her — for example, in a crowded shopping mall. You wouldn’t have to run home to get a photo, Crighton pointed out.
That was the FBI’s goal when it decided to create the app, said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson.
The app takes the CDs and folders that parents have been using for years to store pictures, physical descriptions, fingerprints and DNA a step further, he said.
It also includes advice for families on what to do in the first hours after a child disappears.
The information is housed on the phone only and cannot be shared with other devices, and the FBI cannot access the information remotely, Bresson said. “It doesn’t leave the phone unless you email it.”
The app isn’t a replacement for the childID kits that some parents keep at home, with fingerprints and DNA samples, said Kenny Hansmire, executive director of the National Child Identification Program. The program has provided 30 million kits since 1998 in a partnership with the American Football Coaches Association and the FBI, he said.
The app can’t store fingerprints or DNA samples.
Fingerprints and DNA don’t change over time, but children grow and can change a lot in a short time, Hansmire said, so parents should update their physical descriptions every six months in both the kits and on their phones.
Crighton, who lives in Akron, keeps a packet with her son’s fingerprints at home, but she said she’ll download the app when one becomes available for her cellphone. It would give her peace of mind, she said, to have the basic information that law-enforcement agencies would need if her son disappeared.
The app is available only for iPhones and iPads, but the FBI said there are plans to develop it soon for other mobile devices.
Parents and others can download the app free from the app store on iTunes.
sczekalinski@dispatch.com
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