Military Usage
A simple but effective duress code used over the telephone by SOE agents in occupied Europe during World War II was to give a coded answer when someone checked whether it was convenient to visit a safe-house. If it was genuinely safe to visit, the answer would be "No, I'm too busy." However, if the safe-house had been compromised (i.e. the Nazis had captured it, forcing the occupants to answer the phone at gunpoint in order to lure in other members of the SOE network) the captured agent would say "Yes, come on over." Having been warned that the safe-house had been compromised, the other agent would hang up the phone and immediately inform his team-members so that they could take appropriate action. Typically, this meant using escape and evasion procedures, before the captured agent was tortured by the Gestapo and forced to give incriminating information such as names and addresses.
Read more about this topic: Duress Code
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