It would be more effective to have the FBI do face recognition on everyone's vacation photos on Facebook. Assuming that the kidnappers want to raise the kid a

It would be more effective to have the FBI do face recognition on everyone's vacation photos on Facebook. Assuming that the kidnappers want to raise the kid as their own, they are bound to post pictures of him. This won't work for the 75% that chimeracoder alleges are murdered, but it might for the scenarios like the one you described. Why would a kidnapper would post pictures of a child they kidnapped on FB? Criminals are not always rocket scientists, and even then they aren't always rational(1). The kids also tend to go to birthday parties, school, and other places where other people post pictures of them that get posted on social networks. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak