Passport Cover

[chebe]

Recently in college I studied a paper on RFID tags, which reviewed, poked, and prodded the security of a couple of newer tags. Well, it got me concerned. I pulled out my somewhat dusty copy of 'Switch Craft' and pulled up the project on making passport covers.

Fairly simple project, even if I find the authors way of explaining things a little confusing. Take a layer of outer fancy fabric, a layer of less fancy inner fabric, and sandwich between them a layer of kitchen tin-foil. Of course you can't just use tin-foil as it is because it rips very easily, so the author recommends attaching it to clear sticky-back plastic, the kind used to cover school books. Not having any of that evil, evil stuff, I pulled out a roll of duct-tape. Just build up layers on the back of the tin-foil, first overlapping strips going horizontally, then going vertically.

Cotton, tin-foil backed with duct tape, more cotton

Centre the layers on top of each other, and just sew through around the edge of the template/passport. Then you add the two inside flaps, again just sewing straight along the first seams. Then, cover these seams with bias-tape. This is my first real experience with bias-tape, and I found it easy enough to work with, although I did have a couple of missed sections on the inside that I had to hand-sew shut afterwards. All-in-all, kinda fun.

Outside (I'm loving this fabric from Aunt Bea's Fabric)

Inside

Closed, front

The idea is that the tin-foil layer will create a Faraday cage around your passport while it's in the holder. There is some conflicting research as to whether thin sheets of metal that close to UHF RFID tags actually dampens the signal, as it does for HF tags, or whether it actually amplifies the signal. Until I get a spare few thousand euros I won't be able to buy the readers and test for myself, so as with most things, buyer beware. I'm not especially worried, but that's because I still have the old pre-RFID passport for a couple more years. Hopefully I'll have this technique perfected by then.