Diplomatic bag

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (March 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

A diplomatic bag, also known as a diplomatic pouch, is an envelope, parcel, shipping container or any other kind of receptacle having diplomatic immunity from search or seizure. It need not be an actual bag. They are often transported by diplomatic courier, who are similarly immune from arrest and detention. Some countries with corrupt governments have allegedly used diplomatic immunity to smuggle drugs, which was mentioned by English journalist Tony Thompson in his book Gangs: A journey into the heart of the British underworld.

1 Cryptography
2 In popular culture
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Cryptography

In discussions of cryptography, the diplomatic bag is conventionally used as an example of the ultimate secure channel used to exchange keys, codebooks and other necessarily secret materials. Like Alice and Bob, it is an example of a metasyntactic variable when used this way.

In actual practice, diplomatic bags are indeed used for exactly this purpose. An illustration is the strenuous protest made by German diplomats in Poland in the late 1920s when a cypher machine being shipped to the German Warsaw Embassy — a commercial version of the famous Enigma machine — was mistakenly not marked as protected baggage and was opened, under protest, by Polish Customs. It was released to them, supposedly without much apology (and with still more protest), on the following Monday, but had been thoroughly inspected by Polish cryptography personnel over the weekend.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] In popular culture

In the film The Peacemaker, a diplomat who was also a terrorist smuggled a nuclear bomb into the United States using a Diplomatic Bag. The bag was never searched in customs and aircraft luggage screening due to diplomatic immunity.