**Session Date/Time:** 29 Mar 2023 04:00

# pearg

## Summary

The pearg session covered several topics related to privacy and attribution in online systems. Discussions included updates on active drafts, presentations on intra-private attribution (IPA), secure positioning protocols, and strengthening certificate transparency. The session focused on technical challenges and potential solutions for preserving privacy in various online contexts.

## Key Discussion Points

*   **Draft Updates:** Updates were provided on active drafts including "IP address privacy considerations," "censorship survey," and "safe measurement guidance."
*   **Intra-Private Attribution (IPA):** Martin Thompson presented an overview of IPA, a system designed for private advertising attribution using multi-party computation (MPC) and differential privacy. The discussion covered technical challenges related to MPC performance, communication complexity, and the difficulty in defining the functionality and associated parameters for the technology.
*   **Secure Positioning Protocols:** Filip discussed secure positioning protocols for distributed computations, focusing on partitioning encrypted reports without revealing identifiers. He presented two protocols: dense partitioning and sparse partitioning and touched on their properties like low overhead and efficiency. He also asked about interest in standardizing such protocols separately from IPA.
*   **Strengthening Certificate Transparency:** Alexandra presented work on strengthening certificate transparency against government-level attacks. This involved a new approach to certificate issuance and logging that included a lottery protocol to prevent manipulation by malicious actors or logs.

## Decisions and Action Items

*   Matt Apple will work on the "IP address privacy considerations" draft, taking into account structural changes and organization discussions.
*   The "censorship survey" draft is awaiting review and updates before moving forward.
*   The chairs will work to get the drafts on generation of Trans Numeric identifier and unfortunate history of Transient numeric identifier published.

## Next Steps

*   Martin Thompson plans to continue active research and discussions with the advertising industry on IPA. He hopes to run trials using real advertising data this year.
*   Potential application of Npc in draft should be evaluated.
*   Alexandra will continue to work on critical analysis and further development, potentially exploring the inclusion of monitoring services in log pick protocols.