The original NSA tracking systems were meant to be anonymous too. I don't have a source, but this came out around the time of Snowden in 2013. Basically, the s

The original NSA tracking systems were meant to be anonymous too. I don't have a source, but this came out around the time of Snowden in 2013. Basically, the story was that the original programmer had the idea to encrypt the info of the people being tracked, so that the operators would always see an alias and the underlying info would only be revealed to people with the necessary clearance. I also assume they would also only reveal the information to the operators when the targeted people became clear suspects rather than just being anyone in the general populace.