Rio Tinto plan to use drones to monitor employees' private lives

Employees at mining firm Rio Tinto may see their private lives monitored by drones in the near future, The Guardian has revealed.

Thousands of Rio Tinto’s workforce live in company-run camps in the Pilbara region, Western Australia, and the company now plans to dramatically expand surveillance after signing a decade-long deal with Sodexo this spring.

The French firm approached The Guardian about publishing an article by their VP Keith Weston detailing how they are in the process of dramatically expanding surveillance at the site via a platform that live streams information to a monitoring station in Perth staffed by 50 people.

Weston wrote: “It gives us actionable, real-time insights and metrics on equipment and people movement, customer satisfaction, even retail spending.