About AMBER Alert

The AMBER Alert program was created as a result of the 1996 abduction of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman from Arlington, Texas. A stranger kidnapped her while she was riding her bike near her grandparents’ house, and she was discovered murdered four days later. For those four days there was a massive manhunt underway that relied heavily upon television news and radio stations covering the story and capturing the community’s attention. Although a neighbor provided police with a possible suspect description, a man walking his dog days later found her body in a creek bed. News and radio were very effective in alerting and notifying the public, accordingly the subsequent reliance on the media in the distribution of AMBER Alerts today. 






The world of technical communications has expanded greatly in the years since Amber’s abduction, and today, AMBER Alerts can be broadcast through the Emergency Broadcast network, through traffic signs, wireless phone alerts, e-mails and web portals such as www.AmberAlert.com.The US House of Representatives put into action H.R. 605 in 2000, which set forth a nationwide initiative to implement the “AMBER Plan.”In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the AMBER Alert legislation making it a national program.The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) guideline was put into place, acting as an alert distribution system for all states to use. This system was originally designed as a weather alerting technology system that sends voice recordings to radio and television stations. The same system is still used today and is now called the Emergency Alert System (EAS). Some states still use the EAS as their Primary Alerting System. Other states have adopted more technologically advanced and quicker alert distribution systems, such as The AMBER Alert Web Portal, operated by AmberAlert.com.This Primary Abduction Alerting and Notification System is free to AmberAlert.com’s participating states. Our Company explains in more detail The AMBER Web Portal.

There are also secondary alert distributors like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, founded in 1984, that work with Primary Alerting companies to re-distribute alerts to their own distribution list and offer a wonderful source of information and reference data in missing children, sexual exploitation and the alerting systems.




There is a common misconception is that there is a “National AMBER System.” In fact, the Department of Justice administers an unfunded mandate that requires each state to implement the AMBER Plan. Each state been challenged to find, develop and maintain its own alert distribution partners and channels.