Posting photos of missing persons on public internet

[Julie Willard]

I’m the Clearinghouse Manager in Oregon and we are trying to upgrade our missing person web page to include photos. We have three questions we are hoping to get some feedback on:
1) If you have photos on your missing person webpage, how did you implement it?
2) Do you require any type of waiver from the family or law enforcement agencies that will allow you to post photos?
3) What challenges or roadblocks did you run into?

Currently we only have a list of names and descriptors on our webpage and we would love to have any feedback from anyone who has something they would like to share.

Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise and also for all you do to help the missing!

[Katherine Cheney]

The Missouri Clearinghouse uploads photos through a in-house systems that talks to our website. They are manually uploaded. We only take photos that come from the police department and do not require a wavier on our end as the local agency should be doin that. Most of the photos posted to our website are DL photos. We upload DL photos of our own accord. If no DL photo is available then we request a photo from the local agency. The challenges we face are getting responses from our local agencies when no DL photo is available.

[Jolene Hardesty]

Hi Julie,
Michigan here. We don’t have our own Clearinghouse website for the missing children. However, our Michigan Department of Health and Human Services does. They do require parental or guardians written authorization prior to posting the children’s pictures online. We at the Michigan State Police do not have a website because maintaining it and updating it with cases would be a full time job.

[Brian Frost]

Good Morning Julie,

I know we’ve talked a bit about it but for Montana, here goes:

1) We do have photos on our website. On average, we see about 80-90% of persons missing persons having photos on our website. We automated our process through our state’s message switch to automatically send information and photos into our own state-held database whenever a law enforcement agency enters a missing person or missing person image into NCIC. We then have a call from our website to our state database every 15 minutes to check for updates, clears, cancels, etc.

2) We do not require a waiver and most of the photos come directly from law enforcement. A majority of our photos are DL photos BUT our lawmakers felt strongly enough about our website that back in 2019, they passed an opt-in child photo law. This law grants access for MT DOJ employees to our Office of Public Instruction (OPI)’s database of school children. Each fall, children have their photos taken. Schools are supposed to send a mailer in with their picture packets that enables parents opt-in to having their child’s photo shared with DOJ for the express purpose of use if their child goes missing. If its filled out and signed by a parent/guardian, the image is uploaded into OPI’s database. Since its opt-in, we do have about 25% of all school-aged Montana children having photos in that database. Every week I check OPI’s database for children without photos and add them if I find them.

3) For implementation of our automated process, mostly getting all the moving parts on the same page and having meetings about the work flow. We changed our State’s Switch 2 years ago and it took a while to get all the moving pieces on board to “reconnect” things. Otherwise our biggest hurdle for photos is the marginalized youth – those in either some sort of government care or those coming from broken homes. Most parents I talk to have hundreds if not thousands of photos of their children on their cell phones. But the kids in care or those that are in and out of youth homes? Those are the ones I have a difficult time getting photos for.

I hope that helps!
Brian

[Kathleen Leahy]

1) If you have photos on your missing person webpage, how did you implement it?

Our public website communicates with and uses the images that are manually uploaded in our state clearinghouse by the clearinghouse manager. We have a check box that indicates the image uploaded can be viewed publicly and/or is facial recognition acceptable. I don’t know the technical aspects of implementation.

2) Do you require any type of waiver from the family or law enforcement agencies that will allow you to post photos?

I don’t believe we have waivers from the family. Images generally come from NCMEC MP posters, the investigating agencies, DCS Case Workers, and online social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and we make it very clear we are requesting these photos for public use on our website. We also ask our Troopers that come into contact with missing juveniles to send in photos of the recovered juveniles.

3) What challenges or roadblocks did you run into?
Challenges include finding images applicable to post to the public; state law prohibits the use of DL/ID photos without a lengthy process to get permission from our ADOT. We are working on an MOU with ADOT to be able to use DL/ID images when a child is missing since these are generally the best photos for the purpose of MP posters. Many of the juveniles in our database are wards of the state and we find that getting DCS responses to photo requests is a huge challenge and more often than not, DCS does not have a photo available.

[Rachel Ellis]

1) If you have photos on your missing person webpage, how did you implement it? We have a site we made in collaboration with our missing persons stakeholders group neverforgotten.ar.gov
2) Do you require any type of waiver from the family or law enforcement agencies that will allow you to post photos? This site pulls public information directly from the ACIC entry so that the Driver’s License photo is utilized when there is one. For children, photos are posted if law enforcement has uploaded one into the system.
3) What challenges or roadblocks did you run into? Currently the only issue we have run into is since the website populates from ACIC entries, if a department forgets to remove the entry a family may call frustrated that the entry is still on the site. However, they does assist in staying more on top of entries being removed in a timely manner.

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