U.K. Premier Apologizes For Vanished Data Disks

The incident comes as Brown, who took office in June, is still attempting to recover from the political beating he suffered in September, when he appeared to waffle over whether to call a snap general election. Brown ultimately decided against it, which Cameron and other opponents used to portray him as weak and politically clumsy.

The story dominated the radio and television airwaves in Britain on Wednesday as pundits and others expressed mocking disbelief. "He is in a bit of mess now," said Patrick Dunleavy, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics.

Dunleavy said the British civil service, which has long regarded itself as the Rolls-Royce model of administration, also comes off poorly. The idea of a junior employee being able to download a large batch of confidential details off a database and give them to a courier "without internal controls, checks and balances . . . looks very bad," he said.

Paul Gray, head of Revenue and Customs, the office in charge of the disks, resigned Tuesday.

Darling said that before the loss was made public, police had been notified and banks alerted to watch for any unusual activity in the affected bank accounts.

Banks have reported customers calling in to change their passwords or check on their accounts.

Tony Hayes, 79, a retired musician, went to his bank in north London on Wednesday to assure himself that his account was all right. "More care should have been taken" with the government data, he said.

"We need stronger safeguards," agreed Londoner Kenneth Young, 45. "I think everyone should have a shredder now."

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.