Let me tell you about this computer game that I played with a shitty plot.
After the destruction of the Two Towers, we saw the gradual diminishment of personal rights culminating in a bombing of a national monument that made politicians create an international anti-terror coalition.
Alongside this a virus was released into the wild, possibly manmade, possibly not, that resulted in the curtailing of citizen's rights worldwide.
Normal citizens rose up to combat these trends and were swatted down hard enough that secession became the regular conversation of the day.
Tech corporations banded together to create an internet controlled by one major figure.