The documents contained the names, dates of birth, addresses and other passport details of people who had applied for an Indian visa between 2002 and 2005.

An official at the Indian consulate said the San Francisco facility had run out of storage space and hired a company to take boxes containing the visa paperwork and other documents to a local recycling yard -- where it was assumed they would be destroyed. Instead, the boxes marked "visa applications" were simply dumped in a publicly accessible yard at the recycling center where they remained for more than a month.

The gaffe was exposed by the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month. The quoted Consul General B.S. Prakash as saying he didn't consider the documents to be confidential because they didn't include Social Security or credit card numbers.

Thursday morning, however, Pratik Sircar, deputy consul general at the consulate, appeared to be taking a slightly different view. "We appreciate and share the serious concerns that have been expressed about the possible compromise," he said.

All of the exposed documents have since been destroyed, he said, adding that new measures have been implemented to reduce the chances of something similar happening again. He did not elaborate.