Internet and law enforcement

Law enforcement agencies and task forces all around the world work in a more or less coordinated manner to prevent cyber attacks by terrorists and other global threats perpetrated by individuals or organisations. But not only terrorists are target of cyber police, criminals nowadays use the Internet to unlawfully enrich themselves or create mayhem for no actual financial gain.
There are several priorities of such task forces; some are created with just covering one area of cyber villain activities, for instance, the special task force created within the Department of Homeland Security, US-CERT, or United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team. This team started out in 2003 as an Internet task force to prevent cyber terrorism, later it developed into a co-operation of US-CERT and some public as well as private enterprises and sectors to fight cyber crime in general. Constant up to date information and vulnerability information, security alerts, tips and bulletins are available as well as possibilities to report incidents, phishing and vulnerabilities. Even Microsoft is participating.
United States Department of Justice has a separate cyber crime division called Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section, where not only information is available about what happens in the world of cyber transgressions, but also legal issues are being handled, information provided how to report cyber and IP crime, as well as intellectual property offences.
United States Secret Service has several sub departments handling cyber infractions, like computer fraud, electronic crime branch and several task forces.
Worldwide there are several important law enforcement agencies and most important is the INTERPOL financial and high-tech crime division with IT crime and information security and crime prevention departments. The UK has an Internet Watch Foundation, which started out as means to battle child pornography distribution per Internet, but currently is expanded to cover criminally obscene and racial hatred content as well. Virtual Global Taskforce is dedicated to assist fighting online child abuse and consists of police forces from all over the world.
Several countries use their Internet police not only to safeguard and protect their people, but to enforce censorship, manipulate the public opinion, and engage in pro government propaganda. Most prominently, China engages task forces to erase all content which is against Communism, enter forums and bulletin boards, manipulate people directly and create a government guided public opinion.
In Russia, special security services have teams which are called cyber brigades and who manipulate and create a controlled public opinion.
There are also several non-profit and non-governmental organizations engaging in fighting computer and internet crime, like the Computer Crime Research Center, which although independent, has close ties to law enforcement.