  Data sent over the Internet can be monitored and manipulated by intermediate
entities in the data path from the source to the destination. For unencrypted
communications (and some encrypted communications with known weaknesses),
eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks are possible. For encrypted
communication, the identification of the communicating endpoints is still
revealed. In addition, encrypted communications may be stored until such time
as newly discovered weaknesses in the encryption algorithm or advances in
computer hardware render them readable by attackers.
  In this work, we use public data to evaluate both advertised and observed
routes through the Internet and measure the extent to which communications
between pairs of countries are exposed to other countries. We use both physical
router geolocation as well as the country of registration of the companies
owning each router. We find a high level of information exposure; even
physically adjacent countries use routes that involve many other countries. We
also found that countries that are well `connected' tend to be more exposed.
Our analysis indicates that there exists a tradeoff between robustness and
information exposure in the current Internet.
