Schmid said further: "[Non-European nations] have access only to a very limited proportion of [European] Internet communications transmitted by [fiber] cable...only a very small proportion of intra-European Internet communications are routed via the USA....A small proportion of intra-European communications are routed via a switch in London to which the British monitoring station GCHQ has access. The majority of [European] communications do not leave the continent...more than 95% of German Internet communications are routed via a switch in Frankfurt." Now it is easy to see why the German and European Internets were convenient staging areas for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States-the perpetrators' Internet traffic had a tiny chance of being surveilled by either the United States or United Kingdom, nations that lost citizens in the New York City attack. Liikanen's emphasis on "human rights" and respect for "rules of law" last September now looks more akin to misplaced delight about keeping American and British snoopers out of the EU communications system rather than support for principles that should govern and pervade Internet use. NSA Working on Fiber Snooping | 
