Maybe it's just that I do not quite understand the size of United States as a country and the amount of people there. To me it looks like they're very easy to identify, at least from pictures. In my country it would just be the mere idea of publishing people's information, not the factual possibility to truly find and locate the people. I've seen absent-minded lectures almost faint when they've accidentally shown slides of case histories with first name and age showing. Actually I can't remember ever hearing more beautiful apologies than then. And this reaction came when major students of psychology were having a lecture behind locked doors. You just don't show any real personal information. That's a rule.

And what puzzles me with that site is that adoption is obviously available only to those who have already been through the application procedure, what you call it, home checks and all. So the target audience for that site are people who are already enrolled in some adoption system. How come they couldn't have at least a private website? Like, once you've through the adoption permission application whatever stuff you get your personal password to view the registries of available children? Why does that information have to be public to ALL people? If I was to decide, I would hide at least the pictures. Some information could be public, but health details and pictures should be accessed only with some sort of authorization. But well, that's just me.

It is also difficult for me to relate to the idea of milk carton pictures. We don't have that either. Children gone missing is extremely rare and if something like that happens, it is a topic in national nine pm news. Even then it usually takes several days before child's photograph is published, unless the parents themselves demand it. There was just this case the other year when a child went missing from daycare home. The event was told about in the news with picture and personal info and later on the parents were angry about it. The missing child turned out to be dead and having his picture and personal details published in media was said to be traumatising to his parents. They regretted later on that they ever gave their child's picture to the news and after that the etiquette of personal information in media has been even stricter. If a child goes missing, you publish a description of the child but not the name or picture. That's how it usually goes here. Happens a couple of times in a year.

But if it works and children are okay with it, then it's alright. But it truly amazes me.... Cultural differences...