I think I might describe this more as equivocation between freedom as scope of local action and freedom as degree of global constraint: we're used to dealing with the word in terms of the categories of action that governments or cultural forces exclude from us, de facto or de jure, and not in terms of what the local environment allows us to do. (Prohibitions on shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater are rarely held to infringe free speech, to give a famous negative example.).

I'd hazard a guess that this is partly due to the common use of "freedom" as a political buzzword, almost always in the constraint sense.