British police do not need to claim anything. Britain has the most intrusive laws governing ISP logging of their customers, the English were pioneers in this area.
ISPs in Australia log activity too but not by choice, it's a government requirement and it's not just activity itself but for dialup customers even the number they connect from is logged as well. Perhaps you believe that people are oblivious to this. On the other side of the coin is a little thing called the Privacy Act, which among other things governs what ISPs can do with the information they collect and how the information can be stored and for how long it must be held, etc. Can a spy agency here just help themselves to the information? No. They have to get a court order ad to get that they have to explain to the magistrate why they require the information. Telling the court that the FBI (or any other spy agency) wants it is not good enough and would be laughed at every step of the way.
I think you would be pleasantly surprised as to what lengths are required to obtain personal information about other people. The AFP (Australian equivalent of the FBI) can't even hold a suspected terrorist for more than 48 hours without laying charges so what hope have they got trying to arrest someone who was distributing a few movies or songs on IRC which isn't harming anything aside from the greedy pockets of multinational record companies. It is my suggestion that most western countries have a similar situation. Your belief that the FBI is the recipient of conveyor belt loads of information about non-US citizens is a patent case of make-believe. You need to stop watching "Greatest American Hero" and look at the real world.
