who exactly has the information of what we are downloading and what is being uploaded? is there anyway that the government get get there hands on this stuff?

To my knowledge (& this may vary from country to country/state to state), your isp has the knwledge but unless they have some type of forced hand in the matter such as a warrant/etc by those that be at the highest level to be able to do such things, your addresses are 'arguably' safe. If you're dwnlding/sharing the most recent movies, etc. & in particular large no.'s then only then would it catch anybody's attention. In most cases, for those people who have got into strife, it's been incidental in that they were caught for doing something else wrong but b/c they were dwnlding copyright material it added weight to the cause (ie: anything they could find to add weight to that person's woes.) But for you, don't stress out too much about it.