[mpclark]

Jigsaw identification is a real thing, and real journalists are taught about it as part of defamation awareness.

Related story: when I was the deputy editor of a paper in a large UK city I was read in on the approximate locations of people known to be on our patch who were subjects of injunctions protecting their identities, just so that we didn’t accidentally reveal anything that could expose their whereabouts when reporting seemingly unconnected events such as house fires etc.