> the agency said it had "never passed information onto the security services." Such an unambiguous response is exceedingly rare
It's actually not as clear as you think. The law, section 39(4)(f), says "an Intelligence Service", the reply says "the security services". So is there an "Intelligence Service" that they don't consider to be "the security services"?
They also didn't answer about whether they have ever passed on data under section 39(4)(f), which would allow them to pass all the data to the police "for the purposes of a criminal investigation". The police could then have forwarded the data to the security services. That way, they could still claim they "never passed information onto the security services" because they didn't, they passed data to a middleman.
There is a long history, especially in the US, of intelligence agencies making very careful denials that are literally true but very misleading. OK, this is the UK, but I'm still sceptical.
A better set of FOI questions might be:
Please list every disclosure you have made under Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 part 39(1)(a). If any disclosure is exempt from disclosure under FOI, please state so. If no disclosures have been made under this section, please state so.
... then repeat that for (b), (c), ... (i).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
