Egyptian phone thief unwittingly stars in Dutch film project: Dutch film student Anthony van der Meer wanted to know what goes on in the mind of mobile phone thieves. He pre-loaded a phone he bought with spyware and the anti-theft app Cerberus to keep tabs on it, and tricked a thief into lifting the device. The app gave van der Meer access not only to the location of the device, but also to its contents and features, meaning that he could retrieve any file stored on the phone and also use its camera and microphone to surreptitiously spy on the bandit (as if we needed to be even more concerned about our privacy). “Over the next two weeks, the film student secretly followed the thief as he wandered around Amsterdam with his lifted phone, documenting his each and every move — and eventually turning it into a documentary,” calling it “Find My Phone” (runtime 21:29). The Next Web calls the short film “equally thrilling and disturbing … an intimate exploration of the mind and life of a thief through the lens of technology.”

Oh, and turns out that the guy who stole van der Meer’s phone was a middle-aged Egyptian man.