I have a little more time now to write more. A Faraday cage needs to fully enclose an object with electrical conductivity in all directions. Solid metal is best, but holes are fine as long as they are substantially smaller than the RF wavelength you’re trying to block.
WiFi has wavelengths between 5 and 13 cm (speed of light divided by frequency). Microwave ovens are also around 12 cm and you can see the small holes in the screen you can see in the glass through the door. “Substantially smaller” than 12 cm, at least by an order of magnitude (10x), but approaching 2 orders (100x), around 1 mm.
What matters is the size of the holes in your mesh, the type and thickness of metal, and the quality of the electrical contact across all seams. No gaps bigger than a half millimeter (based on 1/10th the wavelength, or maybe no gaps under 0.05 mm), anywhere. Bags have sewn seams and could spend a little or a lot of effort making it be conductive. Conductivity isn’t a normal sewing consideration and doing it well costs more. Then there’s the access hatch.
In an Anechoic chamber, the door has very good copper (and possibly gold plated, I don’t recall) connections all around a solid door on a big hinge with a big handle that cam-locks everything tightly. Obviously that’s really expensive, but it scales down from there. A good mesh bag folds the lip over on itself, but its still going to be poorly electrically connected at a micro level, especially with dirty durable metals.
You’ll open and close it a lot and it will definitely flex and get dirty, so I expect it to get worse over time.
The seam on a Ramsey box is a U-shaped aluminum channel on the bottom, containing conductive foam covered in a flexible wire mesh layer that gets compressed against the top aluminum edge in the middle. All of the aluminum edges are raw for electrical connectivity, while the outer shell of the aluminum box is coated to make it durable and easy to handle. There’s a decent latch to put a lot of force into holding it closed and compressing that foam tightly. It wears out over time. There’s a lot of work that goes into making that $600 box perform really well.
I’m sure you could find a bag that works half decently, but it will be pretty expensive and it will get worse over time. I’ve handled an evidence bag designed to keep devices isolated in transit. It looked decent, but I didn’t test it. Maybe you can find one of those but I bet it’s not from Bezos.
I kinda disagree with your overall plan being the best response to pervasive corporate and government surveillance, but you should at least be empowered with a scientific basis to evaluate a solution so I hope that helps.
I have a little more time now to write more. A Faraday cage needs to fully enclose an object with electrical conductivity in all directions. Solid metal is best, but holes are fine as long as they are substantially smaller than the RF wavelength you’re trying to block.
WiFi has wavelengths between 5 and 13 cm (speed of light divided by frequency). Microwave ovens are also around 12 cm and you can see the small holes in the screen you can see in the glass through the door. “Substantially smaller” than 12 cm, at least by an order of magnitude (10x), but approaching 2 orders (100x), around 1 mm.
5G is a bit all over the place, so let’s stick with wifi.
What matters is the size of the holes in your mesh, the type and thickness of metal, and the quality of the electrical contact across all seams. No gaps bigger than a half millimeter (based on 1/10th the wavelength, or maybe no gaps under 0.05 mm), anywhere. Bags have sewn seams and could spend a little or a lot of effort making it be conductive. Conductivity isn’t a normal sewing consideration and doing it well costs more. Then there’s the access hatch.
In an Anechoic chamber, the door has very good copper (and possibly gold plated, I don’t recall) connections all around a solid door on a big hinge with a big handle that cam-locks everything tightly. Obviously that’s really expensive, but it scales down from there. A good mesh bag folds the lip over on itself, but its still going to be poorly electrically connected at a micro level, especially with dirty durable metals.
You’ll open and close it a lot and it will definitely flex and get dirty, so I expect it to get worse over time.
The seam on a Ramsey box is a U-shaped aluminum channel on the bottom, containing conductive foam covered in a flexible wire mesh layer that gets compressed against the top aluminum edge in the middle. All of the aluminum edges are raw for electrical connectivity, while the outer shell of the aluminum box is coated to make it durable and easy to handle. There’s a decent latch to put a lot of force into holding it closed and compressing that foam tightly. It wears out over time. There’s a lot of work that goes into making that $600 box perform really well.
I’m sure you could find a bag that works half decently, but it will be pretty expensive and it will get worse over time. I’ve handled an evidence bag designed to keep devices isolated in transit. It looked decent, but I didn’t test it. Maybe you can find one of those but I bet it’s not from Bezos.
I kinda disagree with your overall plan being the best response to pervasive corporate and government surveillance, but you should at least be empowered with a scientific basis to evaluate a solution so I hope that helps.
Science Fucking Matters.