I, unfortunately, don't really know. That being said - it appears as though that is the way that the game is set up to work. IE, if you want any information about another player you have to go through the inspection process and learn it that way. Then, the information can be cached and you'll never have to go through the process again (until you "clean" your cache, I'm guessing).
But, I could be totally wrong about this (go figure
).