I don't think that the inability to spy on traffic is a typical benefit of satellites over fiber optic cables. :-( Spying on RF signals to and from satellites

I don't think that the inability to spy on traffic is a typical benefit of satellites over fiber optic cables. :-( Spying on RF signals to and from satellites was a major Cold War activity. Governments spent a lot of money on it and got really good at it. You might say that satellite data is still safer than terrestrial cables because a particular adversary might not be present in the footprint of a particular satellite, but (1) they might be, because the equipment needed to intercept the downlink may be easy enough to conceal, and (2) satellite signals get intercepted in both directions, uplink and downlink. The one countersurveillance benefit that I can think of is in bypassing cable landing regulations that are used to require cable operators to give governments access to the data on their cables. While governments may also try to place licensing regulations on the use of satellite data services within their territory, it's a lot easier for individual end-users to evade or ignore those regulations than it would be for them to surreptitiously land a fiber-optic cable! However, governments will also have an easy time monitoring downlink signals in their territory so they may not lose much access compared to the cable landing license approach, depending on how the operators handle link encryption.