There are some protections you can use to keep your identity secret, but most of them end up just relying on not being worth the time and effort to them.
You can get a VPN in a country that doesn't have any notable handshake with the U.S. government, for example, but a lot of shitty VPNs will retain logs even if they say they won't.
Anything that pings off of a cell tower should be locatable to at least some margin as well. I notice my cell phone logins often say my accurate location, even without location tracking on, whereas on a desktop it can assume I am +/-30 miles away.
TL;DR: There is no way most of these SWATers that never get caught are all taking every single possible precaution, there should be more SWATers found before they do it a second time.
There are some protections you can use to keep your identity secret, but most of them end up just relying on not being worth the time and effort to them.
You can get a VPN in a country that doesn't have any notable handshake with the U.S. government, for example, but a lot of shitty VPNs will retain logs even if they say they won't.
Anything that pings off of a cell tower should be locatable to at least some margin as well. I notice my cell phone logins often say my accurate location, even without location tracking on, whereas on a desktop it can assume I am +/-30 miles away.
TL;DR: There is no way most of these SWATers that never get caught are all taking every single possible precaution, there should be more SWATers found before they do it a second time.
They're likely in on it, if not "it" itself.