Sure it might have been technically, they were not on the ball at all though, in reality you can do what you wanted and you would be very very unlucky if you got caught by one of the few authorities.
Generally speaking though they had a lot more freedom for a lot longer than anyone else on the continent, that is especially true during the years that the philosophes battled the religion and won. Voltaire and the like.
Meekly accepting your right to protest to be taken away by cynical politicians pretending to be left or right is certainly not the answer. Nor is meekly accepting the government locking down the internet creating a masturbator base and otherwise connecting every person and their likeness to their IP address and every single thing they do in a database that lower level government, politician, and hackers and foreign intelligence agencies and other organized groups can access.
Labor is the enemy.