Has this been discussed before regarding the illegal unmasking?

THEORY:

Samantha Powers was not really doing all that unmasking. Instead, the criminals were accessing Five Eyes databases and getting intel. That would only be UK/AUS/etc. intel, not US intel. It would be a starting point, though.

Once they knew what they were looking for, they would access the NSA database and use Samantha Powers' name, since they obviously would not want to use their own.