The United States has given itself some more power over the Internet with the help of a federal judge. According to a recent ruling, Internet service providers are now obliged to turn over customer emails and other digital content demanded by the US government through search warrants even when the information is stored overseas.

Basically, the United States can now bypass individual laws given by the world’s governments and any efforts to safeguard information from the prying eyes of the NSA by storing data outside the United States.

US Magistrate Judge James Frances in New York has decided that Internet service providers such as Google or Microsoft must turn over any customer information demanded by the government, along with any emails stored in data centers outside the United States.

The reasoning behind this decision is that it would just take too long for US agencies to coordinate efforts with foreign governments to obtain the desired data, which would burden the government substantially. “Law enforcement efforts would be seriously impeded,” the judge said.

Considering the current international debate over privacy following the huge disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the NSA’s efforts to collect huge amounts of customer data from everywhere in the world, this new piece of information comes in line with the current trend in the United States.

Companies such as Google and Microsoft have data centers in many countries of the world. So far, this meant that the United States government couldn’t easily gain access to the data stored in these locations and therefore many were content with the added layer of security.

Brazil had in fact considered demanding that tech companies store citizens’ data on specially created data centers so they wouldn’t be easily accessed by the United States government following the NSA revelations.

The decision comes as Microsoft challenged a warrant because the US government shouldn’t be allowed to search the content of email stored overseas.

“A US prosecutor cannot obtain a US warrant to search someone’s home located in another country, just as another country’s prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States. We think the same rules should apply in the online world, but the government disagrees,” said a Microsoft spokesperson, echoing the frustration felt by many in the world.

The details of the warrant, as well as which agency issued it remain undisclosed, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t even really matter. What does matter, however, is the fact that the United States is trying to use companies with headquarters on its grounds to stretch its access to data it shouldn’t have access to under normal circumstances.