Good sum up there Mate - there are a range of Virtual Private Network providers out there but usually its more for hiding internet traffic and allowing someone to pop out here when abroad for UK TV/Lottery services I think.
As ever the real criminals will be using encryption technologies to hide their tracks and possibly use a number of obfuscation methods to hide the information they want to transmit! Lets face it most of these people know what they are doing and it will be up to GCHQ to crack the algorithms in use by the nasty people.
Its uncommon for corporate and government to send email without encryption, but who knows someone may accidentally send something in plain text and get done.
They can read my email if they want its nothing useful! They will simply store data and use it after the horse has bolted so to speak..
