In many countries not only do they monitor everyone extremely closely, but it is the law that you have to disclose private information if requested by some patsies from the Higher Ups.

And it's all down to Terrorism apparently. Britain has recently (in the last year or so...I don't really follow things that much) passed a law that means you have to disclose the information, and they can monitor you all the time. It comes as no surprise that we are the most watched nation in the World. America probably comes in as a close second, with Japan and/or China somewhere near after Yahoo has been freely giving out information to courts.

If you, as the Forum owner, refuse to comply with the requests then it is quite probable a Search Warrant or whatever can be issued to search the servers and find the information by force.

We live in free countries bound tightly and kept prisoner by stupid laws.