The never-before-seen video that got Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz arrested for illegally downloading millions of academic papers and 'led to his suicide'

Internet activist Swartz, 26, committed suicide January 11, 2013 as he faced up to 30 years in prison

Faced hacking charges for allegedly downloading more than four million academic journals

Video recorded inside MIT wiring closet shows Swartz sneaking in to replace hard drive



Swartz was arrested two days after recording



A hidden-camera video showing late Internet freedom activist and programmer Aaron Swartz sneaking into an MIT computer closet to siphon scientific papers from an academic library has been made public nearly three years after its recording.



The 2011 footage was used by the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue a federal case against the Reddit co-founder, who eventually took his own life.



The notorious clip was released this week by the U.S. Secret Service in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen.



Scroll down for video



Candid camera: A hidden-camera video has been released showing Internet freedom activist Swartz entering a wiring closet at the MIT

Sneaky: The coder is seen opening his backpack and removing a box containing a portable hard drive

The minute-long clip shot with a small camera that had been concealed inside a wiring closet at the MIT begins with then-24-year-old Swartz entering the cramped chamber with a bike helmet shielding his face like a mask.



The coder is seen opening his backpack and removing a box containing a portable hard drive. He then kneels out of the frame, only to reappear five minutes later - presumably after switching out a hard drive from a laptop he had connected to MIT’s network.

Swartz then replaces the hard drive into his bag, switches off the light in the closet and slips out.



The camera had been placed inside the small room in the basement of Building 16 after MIT staff noticed that someone had been downloading millions of articles from JSTOR there.



JSTOR is an archive of scholarly journals to which universities, including MIT, pay large amounts of money for access.

Sting operation: The camera had been placed inside the closet in the basement of Building 16 after MIT staff noticed that someone had been downloading millions of articles

Tying loose ends: Swartz went to the wiring closet to remove his Acer laptop that he had connected to MIT's network weeks earlier

Swartz, who had advocated for Internet freedom, sought to download academic papers and than put them up on a file-sharing site so that anyone could read them for free, according to his indictment.



In an ironic twist, just two days before Swartz killed himself, JSTOR announced that it will be releasing more than 4.5 million articles to the public.



On January 4, 2011, college personnel discovered an Acer laptop hooked up to MIT's grid and called police, who suggested they stage a sting operation in order to catch the perpetrator in the act.



Two days after the secret recording was made, Aaron Swartz was taken into custody and hit with computer and wire fraud charges.



Activist: Swartz's goal was to offer scholarly journals stored in an online library that required a subscription free of charge to anyone

Prosecutors had previously released shots from the video showing Swartz entering the wiring closet as evidence of his alleged guilt.



The activist faced between seven and 35 years in prison, as well as massive fines, if convicted. This past January, Swartz was just weeks away from the beginning of his jury trial when he ended his life inside his Brooklyn apartment at the age of 26.

Swartz's family and supporters around the world, including the hacking collective Anonymous, accused the MIT and the federal prosecutors of driving the young man to suicide.

It is believed that the stress of the looming federal trial contributed to the depression, which is being blamed for Swartz's suicide.



In a statement, his family claimed the Boston attorney's office pursed an 'exceptionally harsh array of charges' for a supposed crime that had no victims, and MIT refused to stand up for Swartz or it's own 'cherished principles.'



According to officials, Swartz had spent three months covertly hoovering up scholarly papers from JSTOR before he was caught. A Cambridge Police report stated that his total haul was 4.8million articles valued at $50,000.

He registered as a guest under the fictitious name, Gary Host - a hacking in-joke in which the first initial and last name spell 'ghost.'

Busted: Swartz was arrested two days after appearing on the wiring-closet recording and charged with computer and wire fraud

Tragic end: The 26-year-old coder committed suicide this past January - just weeks away from the beginning of his federal trial



He then used a software program to 'rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR,' according to the indictment.

MIT and JSTOR tried to block the recurring and massive downloads, on occasion denying all MIT users access to JSTOR.

But Swartz allegedly got around it, in part, by disguising the computer source of the demands for data.

In November and December 2010, Swartz is said to have made 2 million downloads from JSTOR, 100 times the number made during the same period by all legitimate JSTOR users at MIT.

Big business: Swartz co-founded Reddit, which was later sold to the publishing giant Conde Nast

It is alleged that on January 6, Swartz went to the wiring closet to remove the laptop, attempting to shield his identity by holding a bike helmet in front of his face and seeing his way through its ventilation holes.

