#Hydrophones - Could the world's network of hydrophones used by marine scientists to track ocean sounds such as whale songs also be used to spy on the movements of military submarines?

That's a real concern among North America's top brass, as Matthew Braga writes in The Atlantic, for the instruments used by scientists to collect important data on marine wildlife send their information openly across the internet – and may be transmitting more than they think.

"There's a long tradition of the ocean being the exclusive domain of the militaries and the fishing community, and we're more or less interlopers in this world," says Canadian microbiologist Kim Juniper, who explains how some of the data collected by Ocean Networks Canada is diverted – often on a whim – to a secure military computer to parse for potentially classified information.

It's an inconvenience for scientists in the field, to say the least. But since their hydrophones hear everything that passes by - both natural and man-made - the potential security threat is very real.

The Atlantic has much more on the story HERE.