In a 2007 registry in our Uruguay, more than 300 missing people are identified. In more than 20 countries around the world there is an alert system that allows immediacy of the search. This is what the project promoted by the white deputy Álvaro Rodríguez is about, after a talk with the family of Ignacio Susaeta.
Originally from Florida, Álvaro Rodríguez is a deputy for this department and is seeking to renew his seat as the first deputy of List 62 of Carlos Enciso (National Party).
In dialogue with EL ECO, the representative says that he began this project after having talks with Ignacio Susaeta’s family.
In chronicles that EL ECO made when publicizing Ignacio’s disappearance, we specified that his mother was an Antel worker and the Amber Alert technology is linked to telecommunications networks.
“I started because Ignacio Susaeta’s relatives and a lawyer who is defending him in the case asked me about it. I was able to see it in the United States and in several other places I was analyzing it,” he indicated.
Amber Alert is an early warning that broadcasts a plaque that says Amber Alert Uruguay, “with the physical characteristics, with the photo, with the possibility of a projected photo if enough time has passed, from the last time it was seen, authorized by father, mother, guardian or family, up to the second degree.”
“The first hours are essential”
This makes it faster to start the search, “because the media and the press do not have to go looking for information, ask the family for authorization, all those steps have already been taken. Also the possibility of it reaching the cell phone by agreement with the telephone company, the notification to ports, airports, tolls… Because, I repeat, the first hours are essential to find the person alive.”
The way to carry it out
Amber Alert will depend on the Ministry of the Interior, which must integrate it into the Protocol for the Registration and Search of Absent Persons. In addition, activities will be coordinated with the Attorney General’s Office, the Judiciary and the National Emergency System (Sinae), especially in border crossing areas. “It is an important coordination so that it penetrates the entire system.”
Regarding the technological part, what was foreseen in the original project is the incorporation of facial aging software. “Now it is open to new technologies that may come. It can be facial aging software, like the United States or England has, or artificial intelligence can also be used.”
Amber Alert is operating in more than 20 countries. It is named after a girl who died in the United States after she had disappeared (Amber Hagerman**).
“In some other countries it is called Sofia Alert, also after the name of a missing woman. There are more than 20 countries that already implement it. In our case, it is obviously adapted to the territorial reality of Uruguay.”
Disappeared in our country
The word “disappeared” is associated with detainees who disappeared for political or social reasons in the dictatorships that plagued South American countries in the 1970s and 1980s. However, there are also other “disappeared” people. They are people lost during the democratic system and who may be lost for different reasons (kidnappings, homicides, mental illnesses, etc.). In a record from 2007 “when we started the project there were around 300 missing people in Uruguay. It is a statistic that needs to be polished, I think it should be improved a little, because the information in some aspects has been varying, but it is a figure that can be managed.”
Now
The Amber Alert project was approved by all political parties in the House of Representatives and the Senate, with some objections, but they agreed and it passed unanimously.
“Now what is missing is to publish it and then the regulation by the Ministry of the Interior, which is the most important of all. Establish the ways in which it will be done, the agreements with the telephone companies, the number of hours that will be set as a limit for the Police itself, the obligation to take the complaint and immediately notify the agencies… There are a lot of them. of topics to be defined yet.”
*The Ignacio Susaeta Case is an unresolved Uruguayan investigation and judicial process into the disappearance of a young man, José Ignacio Susaeta Rodríguez, which occurred on January 23, 2015 in Montevideo (Uruguay). That day José Ignacio Susaeta was seen for the last time by his parents at their home in Montevideo. At 8:00 p.m. he left in his black car. He said he was going to take a notebook to a fellow student and then pick up his girlfriend Stephanie to return home to participate in a family celebration for his father’s fiftieth birthday. At 10:30 p.m., his mother, concerned about the delay, asked his brother Martín to contact him on his cell phone. In the brief dialogue with his brother, Ignacio even told him: “I’m coming, I’m coming,” this being the last communication with him.
**Amber René Hagerman (November 25, 1986 – January 15, 1996) was a child victim of kidnapping and murder. On January 12, 1996, she was riding her bicycle near her grandparents’ house in Texas when she was kidnapped.
