Mosaic Effect
Separate pieces of information, that by themselves have limited usability, become important and/or revealing when combined. Of particular importance in digital confidentiality and privacy.
Origin
The term emerged in American intelligence and national security law in the 1970s, where analysts used it to justify withholding unclassified information under FOIA — arguing that individually harmless data points could, when combined, expose sensitive operations. The concept was formalized through Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, most notably in United States v. Maynard (2010), the first case to apply it to GPS surveillance: the court held that tracking someone's movements over 28 days revealed behavioral patterns no single data point could, constituting a distinct privacy intrusion.