Acceptable Documents

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This should be a starting point for a assurers who want to find out whether presented documents are acceptable and valid. Of course this strongly depends on the nationality of the person to be assured, so feel free to add resources for your own country if your country is not listed here. I have made a quite detailed document for germany if you want an example, but I think even a simple list of document kinds of your country will be better than nothing.

IMHO it makes sense to distinguish primary and secondary documents. A primary document is goverment issued document with the explicit purpose of proofing one's identity and at least some restistance against simple forgeries like colour copiers. These are typical identity cards or passports (but see below). Secondary documents may be other documents which are suitable to prove an identity. If a person can only show secondary documents I'd consider to request at least three or four of them before assuring him/her. Note that according to CACert policy there still have to be one government issued document with a photography, just the rating of forgery proofness leaves some room for your own judgement.

There is a wikipedia article about which countries use identity cards (which are always considered primary documents) that shows several images of id cards and may be used as a starting point for further research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_identity_cards_by_country

Passports

Every nation on earth issues passports, at least to some of its citizens. The problem with passports is that there is no international standard on what a passport must contain or how exactly it has to look like. So countries with a low per capita income often issue cheaper and considerably less secure passports. I have even heard of passports which do not even contain a photo...

In the view of a CACert assurance I can only cite the policy that at least one of the presented documents has to be a "government issued photo ID" which has to contain the birthdate of the person. So if someone should present you a passport without a photo (or without a birthdate, or btw, with a birthdate different to that entered in the CACert database) you must not accept this as a primary document.

Also you should be very careful if someone presents you a passport of an unusual country (see the chapter on camouflage and fantasy passports below). If you have doubts do not assure the person if no other primary document is presented.

For a bit more reading about passports in general try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport.

Camouflage passport and fantasy passports

Camouflage passports are "passports" issued in the name of a non-existent country and sold by commercial companies. A typical reason why someone buys such passport is, that s/he is afraid of being singled out as a crime victim because of her or his nationality, for example in event of a terrorist hijacking or riot. So camouflage passports are explicitly designed to look realistic, at least to the untrained.

Fantasy passports are more or less something like "club cards", but are also designed to resemble a passport, though for different reasons.

It should be needless to say that neither of these "passports" are considered acceptable documents for a CACert assurance, since they are not government issued.

I have compiled this information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflage_passport, so if you are curious about the topic maybe you should have a look there.

Lesson to learn: You should have a very close look at the document if someone wants to get assured based on a passport issued by an unusual country.

Detailed descriptions for specific counttries