News hit Tuesday (Feb. 2) that the U.S. and the European Union had agreed to a deal on data transfers. The deal, according to an initial report from The Wall Street Journal, had the U.S. agreeing to “binding assurances that personal information about Europeans wouldn’t be subject to mass surveillance when it is copied to U.S. servers.” (Read the IDG News Service story here.)

I hoped that something had been lost in translation from the Brussels agreement, but apparently that is indeed the gist of the deal. What it means is that the U.S. has promised something that it absolutely can’t deliver.

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