A diplomatic bag, also known as a diplomatic pouch, is a container with certain legal protections used for carrying official correspondence or other items between a diplomatic mission and its home government or other official organizations.[1] The physical concept of a "diplomatic bag" is flexible and therefore can take many forms e.g., an envelope, parcel, large suitcase or shipping container, etc.[1] The most important point is that as long as it is externally marked to show its status, the "bag" has diplomatic immunity from search or seizure,[2] as codified in article 27 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.[3] It may only contain articles intended for official use.[3] It need not be a bag; in fact, no size limit is specified by the convention. It is often escorted by a diplomatic courier, who is similarly immune from arrest and detention.[2][3]
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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.
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.