Missing-Person Watchlists on Live Camera Networks

Finding people is the point of all of this. Of everything the platform does, this is the use case that decides whether the rest of it deserves to exist, and IREX works with child-protection organizations to put missing-person watchlists on live camera networks.

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How It Works

A Watchlist, and Cameras That Are Already There

Missing children and adults are entered as a pre-loaded watchlist. If that person appears on any connected camera, an alert fires: face recognition where a photo exists, facial-attribute and appearance-based matching where it does not, and multi-camera tracking to establish a route rather than a single sighting.

IREX partners with organizations working on this directly, including the National Child Protection Task Force, the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative, Million Kids, and Zero Trafficking. Through those partnerships IREX holds datasets of thousands of missing children, and clients can run those lists on their own networks.

It works. Production examples include five missing people found in California on a network of only 23 cameras, 22 trafficking victims recovered in a San Diego effort IREX took part in, and a missing person located in minutes during a live television demonstration.

The Technology

What Runs When Someone Goes Missing

Watchlist Face Recognition

FaceTrack Pro matches faces on live streams against a pre-loaded missing-persons list. The engine is trained on 40 million CCTV images and was ranked #1 among US companies in the 2021 NIST FRVT. Only pre-registered people are recognized.

Attribute Search without a Photo

When a report carries a description but no usable photo, attribute search by gender, age, ethnic group, facial hair, and glasses turns it into a query.

Appearance-Based Re-Identification

Where the face is not visible, person re-identification carries the search on clothing texture, hat and hair color, and accessories such as bags and backpacks.

Multi-Camera Tracking on the Map

From a confirmed sighting, operators follow the person camera to camera, forwards and backwards in time, on the street map and on indoor floor plans.

Search across the Archive

Every detection is indexed, so a sighting from days ago is a query away: under a second across petabytes, by map, by filters, or in plain language through Ask IREX (beta, selected instances).

Alerts to the People Who Act

A match reaches nominated officers through crime centers, dispatch, and the Sover secure messenger with the frame, the camera location, and a live video link, for a person to verify.

The Same Three Factors

Detection, Notification, Response

A Route, Not a Sighting

A single hit tells you where someone was. Multi-camera tracking on the map tells you where they went, in both directions in time, which is the difference between a lead and a recovery. Where the face is not visible, appearance-based re-identification carries the track.

A small boy in a bright-yellow shirt stands alone and still on a Mumbai railway-station concourse, seen only from behind, as adults walk past him.
The reported attributes are the query: Boy, 6, Yellow shirt. Every step of the route that follows is bound to the missing-person report that authorized it.

Mission Partners

The Organizations We Work With

Non-profit organizations that use the platform to find missing children and adults and to disrupt human trafficking. There is no commercial relationship in either direction: IREX provides the technology and the datasets, they provide the casework, and the arrangement exists because that work does not pay for itself.

The Guardrails

Why This Is Not a Loophole

  • A missing-person report is a lawful basis, and it is recorded as one. The Case ID gate requires the operator to state the grounds before a privacy-sensitive search runs, and a missing-person case is one of the documented legitimate reasons.
  • The watchlist constraint still applies: only pre-registered people are recognized. A missing-person deployment does not become general surveillance because the subject is sympathetic.
  • Every search and match is written to the append-only audit log, exported daily, readable by supervisors and oversight bodies.
  • Governments and law enforcement have, in our view, a moral obligation to use tools like this against trafficking. That obligation does not suspend the accountability requirements, and the platform does not let it.

In the News

Missing People Found, on Camera

A selection from the IREX newsroom.

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FAQ

Which organizations do you work with?

The National Child Protection Task Force, the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative, Million Kids, and Zero Trafficking, among others. Through those partnerships IREX holds datasets of thousands of missing children that clients can run on their own networks.

Has it actually found people?

Yes. Documented examples include five missing people found in California on a network of 23 cameras, 22 trafficking victims recovered in a San Diego effort IREX participated in, and a missing person located within minutes during a live television demonstration.

Does a missing-person case bypass the Case ID requirement?

No. It satisfies it. A missing-person report is one of the documented lawful bases an operator records before a privacy-sensitive search, and the search is logged like any other.

Can a city run a missing-children list without becoming a surveillance state?

That is precisely what the narrow-constraints rule is for. The platform recognizes only pre-registered people, cannot identify or track random individuals in public spaces, and logs every action against a lawful reason that a supervisor or oversight body can inspect.

Put a Watchlist on Your Network

If you operate cameras and work with a child-protection organization, this is the shortest path from capability to outcome.

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