[hopeless]

Personal bugbear: Ireland has a lot of connectivity but only three cables (two from Cork, 1 from the north-west) go to a destination other than the UK. All other Irish internet/telephony traffic goes through the UK. Remember that there are many European data centres and EMEA headquarters in Dublin.

Much of it goes through Bude in Cornwall, which has a GCHQ listening post perched over the submarine cable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ_Bude). Or through Southport which is also known to be monitored by GCHQ.

I find it surprising, particularly as the UK prepares to leave the EU, that this issue isn't of more concern

[3pt14159]

MITM attacks are something that only a handful of governments worry about. Everyone is still more concerned about unpatched libraries, SQL injection attacks, and viruses.

[desdiv]

Did you miss the total shitstorm over NSA/GCHQ's bulk collection of internet traffic?

I'd wager over 90% of HN is not fine with NSA keeping a record of all their unencrypted traffic in a datacenter in Utah for later exploitation.