captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, december 6: an american photojournalist and a south african aid worker held captive by al qaeda in yemen die during a u.s. rescue mission. also, examining a fragmented system: are killings by police being undercounted? and in our signature segment, preparing for the inevitable: estate planning for your online life. >> sreenivasan: next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:

corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios in lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. an american hostage has been killed in a failed rescue attempt in yemen. 33-year-old photojournalist luke somers had been held by al qaeda militants for nearly a year. the group recently issued a videotape, threatening his life. somers was fatally shot by his captors last night when u.s. special forces launched the raid on a village in the southern province of shabwa. he died from those wounds. one local tribal leader said commandos landed in helicopters, deployed concussion grenades and

stormed four different houses. a south african captive was also killed in the siege. in a statement, president obama expressed his sympathy for somer's family. he added: "the united states will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring americans home safely." joining me now via skype from bahrain is "new york times" reporter eric schmitt. so, eric, what do we know about the details of this operation? >> well, overnight friday's, early morning in yemen, about three dozen special operations forces, including navy, seal team 6, swept into a small village in southern yemen with the object of trying to free luke, the american photojournalists who was being held hostage there. they came in on osprey helicopter, osprey aircraft, and approacheapproached on foot to e compound and got to within 100 yards of the compound, when somehow they were detected by

the armed gunmen inside holding the hostages. a gun battle broke out. and before the commandos could get inside the compound, both hostages had been shot, as the militants fled. the commandos hurried to get both00s, luke, and a south african, aboard of aircraft out to the navy ship which had launched the mission. unfortunately, one of the00s died en route. the other died on the ship itself. >> sreenivasan: and this wasn't the first time we tried to rescue mr. somers, right? >> no, just a little less than two weeks ago when another special operations team also conducted a raid on what they believed to be a site holding hostages, and they did rescue about eight other hostages, including several yemenis, but mr. somers had been moved with three or four other westerners and so this was a follow-up to try to rescue them before a

deadline imposed by the al qaeda affiliate in yemen on saturday. >> sreenivasan: were there any members of the u.s. special force injured or civilians on the ground or people who were holding them hostage? >> there have been some media reports of civilian casualties but i have not been able to confirm that. there were no military casualties as part of this team. it's a dangerous part, a remote part of yemen. the al qaeda affiliate there has controlled it for some time now, so this is a very dangerous, high-risk mission. >> sreenivasan: and this is a joint operation between u.s. forces and yemeni forces. how has that been going over the past year or two years as these governments have been trying to work together? >> well, the government in yemen has been a very effective partner in the counter-terrorism field. the u.s. has had trainers inside of yemen, training counter-interestim terrorism and special operations forces and there were a few yemeni on this

mission but it was apparently a u.s. operation to rescue the american and anybody else they could find in this comedy pound. >> sreenivasan: everyone in the united states recognizes and remembers in 2011 the successful operation on capture or kill osama bin laden, but since then, at least in the recent past there, vaib couple of failures as well, highlighting how difficult and dangerous these are. >> exactly. it underscores the fragility of the intelligence that these special prailingses officers have to use when they go in. in this case, they were under some time pressures. they knew the hostages were threatened about death by the end of saturday-- or at least the american hostage was-- because of the previous raid just a couple of weeks ago. the militants knew that the americans might be coming again. and so the element of surprise was going to be very difficult to achieve in a mission like this. and i think you're right, it does underscore want limitations of military force in trying to

rescue captured citizens like mr. somers. >> sreenivasan: eric schmitt of the "new york times" reporting for us from bahrain have a skype. thank y >> sreenivasan: earlier today, i spoke with the newshour's tik root, who worked with luke somers in yemen. >> he was kidnapped in september 2013. it really hit home with a lot of us. he was kidnapped from-- in front of a supermarket that we all shopped at at a time of at a daywhen we could have gone there. and he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. i think we-- we were very much aware that, you know, it could have been any one of us. >> sreenivasan: to see my entire conversation with tik root, visit newshour.pbs.org. meanwhile, a raid in north- western pakistan reportedly succeeded in killing a senior al qaeda militant. pakistan says its troops killed adnan el shukrijumah near the afghan border this morning. the f.b.i. suspected him of being one of the leaders of "al qaeda's external operations program." he was accused of plotting to bomb trains in new york and london in 2009. pakistan says two other

militants were also killed in the raid, as was a pakistani soldier. outgoing defense secretary chuck hagel says the u.s. will keep a larger force in afghanistan than it originally planned. hagel announced in kabul today that up to 10,800 troops will remain in afghanistan at the beginning of next year. that's 1,000 more troops than the defense department initially announced. kabul's seen an uptick in taliban attacks over the last few weeks. secretary hagel says the violence was predictable since militants are trying to disrupt afghanistan's new government, led by president ghani. and in the philippines, more than 650,000 people evacuated from coastal villages just as typhoon hagupit made landfall this morning. the storm weakened before hitting the eastern coast, but gusts were still peaking at 120 miles per hour. the typhoon has knocked out power, downed trees and cancelled more than 150 flights since yesterday. and a grim statistic in the fight against ebola in west africa-- the virus has claimed the lives of two more doctors in sierra leone. that brings the total to at least nine doctors killed in that country since the outbreak

began. the number is significant because, of the three most affected countries, sierra leone has the highest healthcare worker fatality rate. the world health organization reports at least 77% of healthcare workers who contracted ebola in sierra leone have died. across all of west africa, 607 health care workers have been infected, and 341 have died since the outbreak began in march. here in new york, police are bracing for a fourth night of protests since the grand jury announced it would not indict the officer who killed eric garner. most of the protests have been peaceful, but the n.y.p.d. did arrest about 20 people last night for being disorderly and blocking traffic. meantime, more protests are expected following today's funeral for another person killed by police. an officer shot an unarmed black man named akai gurley in a brooklyn housing complex last month. police chief bill bratton says the officer accidentally discharged his gun. the brooklyn d.a. is convening a grand jury in the case. on the west coast, experts say

california is in the midst of the most severe three-year drought in the last 1,200 years. researchers report in the" american geophysical union journal" that while other three- year periods have been dry, the current drought is worse because of the combination of unusually- low rainfall and record-high temperatures. also in california tonight, so- called "wildlife killing contests" have been banned. the california fish and game commission approved the unprecedented ban on hunting derbies this week. now, hunters can no longer compete to kill the most coyotes, foxes, bobcats, raccoons or badgers to win prizes. a conservationist group pushed for the ban after finding some protected species were getting killed in the contests. california's the first state to impose such a ban. >> sreenivasan: the nation has been focused on staten island, ferguson and cleveland in the last few weeks as citizens and

law enforcement assess how they have and should deal with one another. this as a new investigation by the "wall street journal" reveals that accounting for killings by police may be grossly underestimated. "wall street journal" reporter rob barry joins us now. so, how did you do your reporting and what did you find? >> thanks for having me. what we did was we asked about 105 departments to give us the number of people who have been killed over a five- or six-year period, and we compared those number to what had been reported to the f.b.i. and we found that there was a lot of stuff that wasn't in the f.b.i.'s information. >> sreenivasan: you said at least 550 police killings between 2007 and 2012 never made it on to the books? >> yeah, and that's only among the top 105, 110 largest agencies in the country. so there are 18,000 jurisdictions, so, you know, that's just a small estimate of the total. >> sreenivasan: okay, so, for example, some jurisdictions could call something a justifiable homicide versus an

unjustifiable homicide, discrepanciediscrepancies in de? what do you mean? >> it was a wide range of things. that was certainly one of the issues. what we're dealing with here are essentially crime reports and agencies who are forced to report information about unfortunate event where's officers take someone's life, they don't really want to include that in a crime report. you know, it's not a crime in their eyes. it was a justifiable event. so there was some concern by some agencies about that issue. there's also a lot of other issues involved. you had technical issues. so you had departments which, you know, at least they told us they thought these things were being reported. they thought they were participating in this program but when they went and looked into this, when we said, "hey, here are the numbers you reported," maybe there would be one and they told us 10. they looked into it and said it turns out we haven't been keying it in correctly. that was another issue. i think the largest issue three of the biggest states in the country, new york, florida, and illinois, have almost nothing reported, and that's because of

the way this process works. what happens is that when an agency wants to send this information to the f.b.i., they pass it through a state agency first. and in all three of those states' cases, there are issues, zeroing issues with the way the states then turn and around fass up to the f.b.i., such that there's no information about justifiable homicides from any of those states. >> sreenivasan: what you're also saying here is not everybody has to report. >> it's voluntarily. exactly. andhen you're dealing with 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, you know, a lot of them small. a lot of these agencies only have, you know, five, 10 officers at them. you know, these events are very rare. reporting them is just not built into their process in many cases. >> sreenivasan: so we've got differing definitions. we've got 18,000 jurisdictions. it's all voluntary, and i'm assuming some of these departments are pretty sensitive about this information in the first place. >> yeah, of course. i mean, each of these things are inflammatory or potentially inflammatory events purpose

there were concerns-- a lot of departments asked me, when we went to them and said, "will you provide us with the number of incidents you have" quite a few departments answered first saying, "why? yes, we'll give it to you, but just tell us why you want this." there is a lot of concern it being used for comparisons. when we see whose happening across the country right now i think you can understand that concern. >> sreenivasan: your reporting is not saying all cops are bad. you're saying there's a discrepancy in how we're porting the information. if there are gaps in the data set, how to we make any policy based on faulty numbers? >> that's a great point, and that's why we were looking add this in the first place. we wanted to get a benchmark. weep wanted to know how often does this happen and who does it happen to? when we tried to do that using the available information and took it to experts, everyone said you can't really do that. and we said okay. and that raised the question of why not? in terms of solutions, as to what we would do from here, it's

a complicated problem, and we discussed most of the reasons why. some-- some of the people involved in this are working now towards coming up with incentives, financial incentives from the federal government or some sort of mandatory process that would require these things to be reported. but from what i've been able to tell at this point there's nothing cob crete on the way. >> sreenivasan: all right, rob barry from the "wall street journal," thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. >> sreenivasan: and now to our signature segment. there are nearly four billion registered email accounts and more than a billion facebook accounts worldwide. in the u.s. alone, according to one study, nearly half of all bills are paid online. and as you'll see in this updated story, untangling all of that valuable electronic information after we're gone is becoming increasingly complicated. >> reporter: do you have an email account? how about a facebook page?

do you bank online? shop online? pay your gas, light, or cable tv bill over the internet? i've just laid out more than a half dozen accounts that many of us have, likely each with its own password. these accounts don't die with us. the passwords to each of them, are often times locked away with only one person, the deceased. which means that valuable online assets could be lost forever or be found by those looking to exploit them. take the case of glenn williamson, a tech entrepreneur in portland, oregon. two years ago, he got the worst news possible. >> i was in the philippines speaking at a conference and, you know, when your phone goes off 15 times and it's 3:00 a.m. in the morning in the united states, you have a bad feeling. you know it's not a good call. >> reporter: glenn's 73-year-old mother, lee, had died. as her fiduciary and as a 25- year veteran of the tech world, it fell to him to manage her online accounts. >> i knew my mom, being a cool grandma, was on twitter. so, i knew she was on twitter and i knew she had a yahoo account, so we had a baseline to

start, but that's all we knew. >> reporter: after 20 hours of searching, glenn found 13 different accounts belonging to his mother, including email, social media and shopping accounts. >> so we broke it down into categories: travel, sentimental value, security, and basically we searched on about 75 different sites. >> reporter: some had real value. >> we got to united, and united did indeed have my mom as a customer. and there was 54,000 miles that we were able to retrieve for our family. >> reporter: all this while he was grieving. >> and it's a painful... it's a long process, and everybody means well, but if one more person tells you they're sorry, it's like, "okay, i just need to know, did she have an account or not." >> reporter: williamson and his wife are online savvy, relatively young and it was still tough to find all those accounts. >> so, the average person, especially if the average person is doing it in their 60s, it's a very, very difficult process. >> reporter: glenn's problems managing his mother's online

estate helped inspire him to start a business solution called "webcease," an online service that helps people search for their deceased loved ones' digital assets. it uses a person's basic information, like an email address, and finds the major online accounts that are linked to it. and although webcease won't shut down an account for you, it will tell you what can be done under a web site's specific terms-of- service. >> my mom had an asset inventory of her financial accounts. but she didn't have an asset inventory of all things digital, and that's really what we provide to the family, is we provide them at a high level a digital asset inventory. so, you can look through it and say, "oh, my mom was on amazon and she had itunes and marriott and hyatt, et cetera." so, that's really the value we provide. >> reporter: webcease is one of a handful of web sites that has sprung up over the last few years-- sites like navigatr, the doc safe, capsoole, my cyber safe and afternote-- all of them trying to tackle what is becoming an increasingly common problem. >> nowadays, everyone keeps

their filing cabinets on their computers, and they may not have shared the access to that with their families. >> reporter: suzanne walsh is an estate lawyer in west hartford, connecticut. >> i have received panicked calls from family members who don't know passwords, don't know the nature of the online accounts. they simply know mom paid the bills online, and they may not even be sure about the bank. >> reporter: walsh says that the main problem is one of access. in many cases, we have made it virtually illegal for anyone else to use our online accounts. it starts with those terms of service agreements, the fine print of the online world. once the "i agree" button is pressed, it's as good as a contract. >> many of them prohibit the sharing of passwords, and they prohibit third-party access. so, right now, they tend to bar anybody but the account holder accessing the account. >> reporter: that means even if the account holder is dead. internet service providers say they're following the letter of the law as spelled out in the

1986 stored communications act, which prohibits anyone from accessing private information online without permission. >> the problem with fiduciary access now is that it may be a violation of federal privacy law or a computer fraud and abuse act. it may be an actual criminal act to violate the terms of service agreement. >> reporter: but being unable to access or shut down a deceased loved one's accounts could have unforeseen risks, as glenn williamson, who spent 20 years in online security, will tell you. >> the year after somebody passes is one of the most vulnerable times for identity theft. it's a heinous crime, but what the bad guys do, because death is public record, they'll go out there and they'll comb through recently deceased and they'll create a fake identity because the deceased don't check email and they don't get the mail. >> reporter: every year, more than two million americans are the posthumous victims of identity fraud. thieves can use a dead person's information to rack up credit card charges, apply for loans or

even file false tax returns. and much of this information can be found on the internet through something as simple as a shopping account. to date, only seven states have any laws in effect that govern online estate planning. suzanne walsh, who chairs a committee on the uniform law commission, an organization which drafts laws which it hopes to standardize in all 50 states, is hoping to change that. over the past two years, walsh's committee has been drafting the fiduciary access to digital assets act, which would give fiduciaries the same rights over online estates as they now have over physical estates. >> fiduciaries, traditionally, have access to everything in admin... especially in administering estates. and that used to mean opening up the mailbox, opening up the file cabinet, rifling through the desk. our act is designed to continue that and facilitate that, given the different nature of the digital assets. >> reporter: the bill was reviewed and enacted by the uniform law commission this past july. but it's still up to individual state legislatures to propose it

and pass it as law. as of now, only one state, delaware, has signed the act into law. even so, the new law has faced opposition. the general counsel of a washington, d.c.-based group called the state privacy and security coalition, which represents the interests of google, yahoo and facebook, among others, has come out against the bill saying, "this law takes no account of minimizing intrusions into the privacy of third parties who communicated with the deceased. this would include highly confidential communications to decedents from third parties who are still alive, who would be very surprised that an executor is reviewing the communications." but, despite the pushback, suzanne walsh is hopeful that her committee's work will be recognized in more state legislatures. >> widespread enactment is our goal. that's our primary goal. certainly we hope and expect that it won't take more than a year or two for most of the states to adopt this product.

>> reporter: for now, there are steps that people can take now to make the process of digital estate management easier on next of kin. first, create an inventory list of all your online accounts and passwords for your fiduciary. stipulate what to do with your email accounts in a will, and read the terms of service agreements, so you can understand how, or even if, access to your accounts can be granted to someone else. but glenn williamson says, no matter what steps you take or what laws are eventually passed, managing a digital estate for a loved one will always be a long, arduous and painful process. >> sreenivasan: to learn how to better manage your own digital estate, visit newshour.pbs.org. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, president obama, who was suffering from a sore throat for the past couple of weeks, had a ct scan at walter reed military hospital today. the ct scan came back normal. doctors say his symptoms are related to acid reflux, a condition that affects one in

five u.s. adults. new research shows giraffes are heading trts extinction. poaching and human population growth have recommendly reduces african giraffe population by 40% over the past 15 years. that's it for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by:

and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. music ♪)

(♪) (♪) daniel mansergh: imagemakers is made possible by a grant from: celebrating the vitality and power of the moving image. and by the: (baby crying) (noise from tv) (bored) do you want to watch something else? hmmm... who was it who killed him? it was the wife, i think.