Theres been a long discussion about the passport stuff, but if I remember the old notes on hot to become a maintainer right there was allways the option to send a copy of the passport via good old mail.
And don't tell me you have no copy maschine near you. Or what about faxing it to a maintainer (which would need a copy first, because passports usually dont bend good, but still). A birth certificate would be just as good, wouldn't it and those are normal paper? Get one and fax it to the person handling you application and I'm sure that would be enough. Care should be taken to choose maintainers that recieve their fax on the computer, so it can be used directly without another quality loss by scanning. I think it is good that Debian has some legal document for each maintainer. Just in case some legal instance drops in (like the FBI) and wants to shutdown Debian because Maintainer Foo hacked their site, Debian can proof the identity of Foo. It makes people think twice before going through the trouble of becoming maintainer. MfG Goswin