In response to social media hacks and government-sponsored surveillance programs worldwide, journalists have relied on closed, encrypted messaging networks like Keybase and Signal to send secure messages.

However, many news organizations do not have guidelines on how these networks can and should be used at work. For example, a company may determine that emails are the intellectual property of the organization and are subject to professional codes of conduct; what about messages sent through encrypted networks?

As hacks become more pervasive, private networks will continue to be popular in 2020. This could be problematic for ISPs: In the wake of net neutrality rollbacks in the U.S., clever users could engage a distributed browser system to prevent an ISP from throttling certain sites or users.