The footage was obtained by Wired's Kevin Poulsen

Dec 4, 2013 13:34 GMT  ·  By

Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government in an effort to obtain the documents that the US Secret Service has on Aaron Swartz, the activist who committed suicide in January 2013. 

Poulsen has already received hundreds of pages of documents. However, he has also obtained the MIT surveillance video which led to Swartz being investigated by authorities.

The video was made in January 2011 while MIT was trying to find out who had been downloading content from its JSTOR. At one point, they found a laptop that had been used to download data in a wiring closet.

At the time, MIT called in the police, but they decided to leave the laptop there to see who comes to pick it up. They set up a surveillance camera in the closet. Swartz fell into their trap. A few days later he was arrested.

The video is available on Wired. The Aaron Swartz documents obtained by Poulsen from the Secret Service are available on Document Cloud.