The Feds have some plan to photograph every kid in the United States a company called Lifetouch is doing it/going to do it. It is all based on the premise that kids go missing and they need good photos for the rescue efforts. Parents are issued a card for each of their children that they can let law enforcement access if they give permission. From the Article:
What is Lifetouch? The privately held company photographs over 24 million North American schoolchildren each fall, making it the market leader. It also takes pictures of millions of other people through J.C. Penney, Target and Flash Digital Portraits studios.
Lifetouch would enlist partner schools that would allow it to distribute to each student a set of wallet cards that include a unique retrieval code and crisis hot-line number for the center.
Lifetouch would provide round-the-clock staff for the center’s hot line. If a child went missing, parents could call the hot line with the code.
The center would authenticate the case and the parents’ consent with law enforcement and then contact Lifetouch with the image-retrieval code.
Lifetouch would immediately transmit to the center the image of the child, faster than many parents could get a high-quality, usable image to the center.
The center could then broadcast the image through Amber alerts, its Web site, posters and mail inserts.
“Getting the picture is extremely valuable” to the search process, Bob O’Brien, senior director of the Missing Children Division at the center, told me. He explained that one in six recovered children is found as a result of a poster, “and many parents are challenged finding a quality picture of their kids to use for the poster.”
Since the launch, Lifetouch has spent more than $2 million to keep the program running and has assisted in more than 400 searches. Lifetouch images directly led to the recovery of seven children, O’Brien said.
I am really not sure how I feel about this. It feels a bit to big brothery to me.
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