Both Yahoo and Google have announced that, as of January 24th, they will no longer release any user account information (such as emails, stored files, etc.) to the government without a warrant. This is in direct opposition the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows government agencies to search data older than six months with no more authority than a subpoena, which do not require a judges signature and do not empower a law enforcing agency to search and seize documents.

Google, up to this point, has handed a record number of files over without a warrant, with only 22% of file requests being ‘warranted.’ That will likely continue. Google claims they will always hold out until a warrant is presented, but a subpoena would still force the company to appear in court with documents in hand by a certain date, or face consequences.

Nevertheless, this is the first time major email providers have challenged the ECPA. Their logic is that the ECPA is hopelessly outdated, written when “holding an email for over sixth months” was virtually unheard of. Now that everyone and their grandmother has more than 6 GB of email storage, Google’s argues that warrantless email searches are unjustified.

And no, Anonymous’ attack on the U.S. justice system was not in any way connected to this announcement, which took place two days before the international group of hackers shut down the site and stole a large number of restricted files.

The Justice Department has yet to make comment on Google’s new policy.