In the UK, officials are increasingly worried that the country’s Freedom of Information system may be giving foreign actors a way to gather sensitive insights, one request at a time, according to reporting from the Financial Times. The core of the suspicion, based on discussions between the UK government officials, is that some of these requests could be linked to China.
“There’s a growing awareness that FOI is being used by hostile states, and China in particular—specifically in relation to defence matters,” one official said, as reported by the Financial Times.
In theory, Freedom of Information laws are straightforward. Anyone can ask public bodies for unclassified information, and the government is required to respond unless exemptions apply. In practice, though, the system relies heavily on trust. Requesters are expected to provide real names and addresses, but identity checks are rarely enforced.
That gap is where concerns are growing. Within government, there is a sense that some requests—especially those tied to defence and national security—may be becoming a target. Instead of asking for obviously sensitive material, these requests, the FT claims, have focused on small, specific details. On their own, these details may seem harmless. Combined, they can reveal much more.
In intelligence circles, this is known as the “mosaic effect."
The approach reflects a change in information gathering. Rather than relying on classified leaks or cyberattacks, the focus moves to open systems that were built to be accessible. As UK security minister Dan Jarvis put it last year, China often works with “a low threshold for what information is considered to be of value,” collecting fragments to “build a wider picture.”
That method could make detection harder if the country was indeed carefully requesting data from the UK. Much of the activity sits within legal boundaries, especially when requests only involve unclassified data. At the same time, there is debate over how serious the risk really is. Some transparency advocates argue that existing safeguards already account for this. Civil servants can reject requests if they believe the information could be pieced together in a harmful way.
“They are very cautious,” said Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for FOI, pointing to existing refusals on “jigsaw effect” grounds in sensitive areas.
Techloy
