A bill proposes enlisting mobile phone operators to broadcast an SMS to the population when the Kidnapping Alert system is triggered.
In the event of a child abduction, should the population be notified by sending an SMS? This is the bill put forward by Antoine Vermorel-Marques, deputy Les Républicains. Submitted to the National Assembly on January 17, it aims to put mobile telephone operators in the loop in order to report the kidnapping of a minor.
The Abduction Alert system has existed since 2006 and relies on a network of partners to disseminate reports as widely as possible. There are television channels (TF1, France Télévisions, M6, Canal+, LCI, CNews…), radio stations (Radio France, NRJ, Europe 1, Skyrock, Fun Radio, RTL, RMC, BFM, Autoroute FM…) and the AFP.
The system also mobilizes major transport operators (such as RATP and SNCF), motorway concessionaires, managers of urban billboards, leading websites (such as Le Monde, Free, Orange, etc.) and even Facebook, the most frequented social network in France. The platform has been a partner since 2011 (in the USA, the system has also been extended to Instagram).
Alert the population as quickly as possible to find a child
The whole point of a strategy based on an abduction alert is to quickly and massively disseminate the information, to increase the chances of a successful outcome. Twenty-seven alerts were triggered between 2006 and 2021, including one false alert. Of the twenty-six true cases, the children were found safe twenty-five times.
” The first hours following the disappearance are decisive “, observes the elected representative of the Loire in his explanatory memorandum. Indeed, these reports can thus alert potential witnesses, who can then approach the authorities to report what they have seen. But while a vast majority of the population has a mobile phone, the SMS option has not been adopted so far.
Nevertheless, ” the chances of quickly finding the kidnapped minor would be greatly increased “says the parliamentarian, adding that 92% of French men and women have a mobile phone. He thus proposes to fix this new rule in the code of the posts and electronic telecommunications, to enlist Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile.
The idea of mobilizing text messages to warn the population in the event of kidnapping is not new. Moreover, the bill takes up the one tabled in 2018 by another elected official. This approach has already been observed in 2020 during the covid crisis, with a government SMS and another dedicated to the TousAntiCovid application. And today, France is also able to do so to warn the population in the event of serious danger.
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