In reply to Mskittens:
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And that shows another issue with the whole concept
of "monitoring the Internet". Who's laws should be used for example? US? UK? China? Iraq? What is legal in one country (in this example) the UK, may not be acceptable in another (perhaps Canada and US). I believe in Canada you are required to have a search warrant to take a computer if you suspect it to be part of a crime, e.g., hate crime.

As for your government using their "contacts" to get information that is supposed to be secure, I can see why you distrust your government. I haven't heard or seen that in Canada (at least to my limited knowledge)

This, I suspect, is part of why there are varying degrees and views as to what is acceptable of government involvement and what is not. But maybe that's just me.
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I agree with your point as to which countries law should apply (obviously a problem with the net).
I think you misunderstood my post. The point I was making was that private investigators (not the UK government, which already has access to all this information), can find out a lot of extra details.
I think it is very alarming that it is possible (with enough $) to find out details about someones credit rating (together with details of all their credit cards & other private information), and in some cases what their record is on the PNC (police national computer).