They usually hand out tin foil hats to the dig crew. A clear give away
and easy to spot too.
Next?
Because if they DON'T hit the line, it is still a secret.
Then again, if they DO hit the line, it's pretty obvious what the line is
for and at least one place it runs. I wonder if the Gov't schedules a
move of the line once it's operational security is comprimised by an
accidental cut.
Beckman
putting fiber in the ground isn't a quiet task...
sronan@fattoc.com (Shane Ronan) wrote:
In my experience they are required not only to mark the line, but to
identify it with the initials of the owner.
Hell yeah - but that's not the point I wanted to make.
For any given construction project, the main goal is to
build something without destroying something else (unless
it's planned to be destroyed).
Unfortunately, this goal has to be broken into easy tasks
for the people executing the work. And what leaks to them
is "dig a hole".
They definitely don't care whether they _will_ hit something.
They do care after they hit something...
(sometimes they'll try to cover up like someone did here;
after cutting a whole bunch of fibre trunks, they decided
to fill the just-dug hole with a ton of concrete...)
Something like Fiber SenSys (http://www.fibersensys.com/) is probably used. Measures miniscule changes in light levels to tell whether or not fiber has been tampered with.
As for the response in "seconds", I would have to say that the suits were parked right there watching, assuming the story is true. Not sure if anyone has ever tried to get anywhere in Tysons Corner during roadside construction (or during an afternoon drizzle for that matter), but I can guarantee you that it would be impossible without someone already being stationed onsite.
No. And here's why: If you're a naughty foreign intelligence team, and
you know your stuff, you already know where some of the cables you'd
really like a tap on are buried. When you hear of a construction
project
that might damage one, you set up your innocuous white panel truck
somewhere else, near a suitable manhole. When the construction guy with
a backhoe chops the cable (and you may well slip him some money to do
so), *then* you put your tap in, elsewhere, with your actions covered
by
the downtime at the construction site. That's why the guys in the SUVs
are in such a hurry, because they want to close the window of time in
which someone can be tapping the cable elsewhere.At least that's what I heard. I read it somewhere on the internet.
Definitely. Not at all a sneaky person. No sir.
And if you were a naughty foreign intelligence team installing a tap, or a bend, or whatever in the fiber contemporaneously with a known cut, you could also reamplify and dispersion compensate for the slight amount of affect your work is having so that when its tested later, the OTDR is blind to your work.
Ah, the fun of Paranoia, Inc.
Deepak Jain
AiNET
It would also be cheaper to add an additional layer of security with
encryption vs. roving teams of gun toting manhole watchers.
YMMV,
Best!
Marty
Cheaper?
To quote sneakers.... were the united states govt. we don't do that sort of thing.
Martin Hannigan wrote:
Even if encrypted, you can probably do an amazing amount of traffic
analysis to tell when something is afoot. Ask any pizzeria near State Dept
or Pentagon. 
(That, plus it's easier to break an encryption if you have gigabytes of
data to work with, than if you don't have any data to work with...)
link-layer encryption for sonet/atm quite resistant to traffic
analysis... The pipe is full of pdus whether you're using them or not.
Sounds like a lot of work to me. Wouldn't it be easier to just find the carrier
neutral colo facilities where all the peering/transit between major networks
happens, and pay them money to put up a fake wall that you can colo your
optical taps behind?
Drive Slow, and remember, don't open any doors that say "This Is Not An Exit",
Paul Wall
Sounds like a lot of work to me. Wouldn't it be easier to just find the carrier
neutral colo facilities where all the peering/transit between major networks
happens, and pay them money to put up a fake wall that you can colo your
optical taps behind?
Yeah.... it's not like that's ever gonna happen! 
Drive Slow, and remember, don't open any doors that say "This Is Not An Exit",
ROFL