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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time. They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points. These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles—regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. While these systems can be useful for tracking stolen cars or wanted individuals, they are mostly used to track the movements of innocent people.
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I find that statistic concerning.. Mainly because its made-up, and its attempted exaggeration unnecessarily adds to the social panic.
If you read the Epstein files, most of those children were never categorized as missing, runaway or anything similar.
So I did a quick search because that number seemed absurd, even for a developing country like the US, and it's in the right ballpark, but according to the sources "most are found and returned to safety". Most are runaways (92%), and about a third of the remaining 8% are abductions by strangers (would work out to about 13000), and that is disturbing, if true.
Could have gone with "13,000 unsolved missing child reports" and been more effective, because the number would have been credible
What about abductions by their parents? It's the one I was warned the most about in my 15 years of working with children
Of the 8% that aren’t runaways, it’s about 2/3 of that. Or 6% of missing kids are abducted by a non-custodial parent.
That point does make the figure a bit more plausible and logical in a sense. The problem is interpretation since majority of cases are fortunately short-time and quickly resolved.
The missing children? That's not a made-up number...
So not only does 1/1000 of every Americans go missing every single year (that would be wild), and you're telling me it's all children? 600000 every single year?
That’s just the number of missing child reports. The vast majority are teens who are gone for a couple of days without telling their parents where they’re at and are found and returned quickly (92-93%).
A good portion of those reports are multiple reports for the same teenagers that repeatedly run off from home. Frequent runaway teens with 10 or more missing child reports make up 30% of all missing child reports each year. https://popcenter.asu.edu/node/37501
From a few comment below: https://globalmissingkids.org/awareness/missing-children-statistics/
And yeah, children go missing very easily. These are the number of reports. Most children are found very quickly after reporting.
It's technically not. Someone else said 92% are found quickly. Runaways, parents don't know where their kid is, etc, its the number of "reports".
But the other 8% are about 13k kids. Even that amount is kinda crazy tbh.
But they don't believe it's real, and their own perceptions of reality are clearly more important than actual reality!