“This is freedom of speech. This is America, right?”

Those were the incredulous words of Raquel Pacheco, a US Army veteran and three-time candidate for local office. She made the remark while being questioned by police at her Miami Beach home last week for criticizing her mayor on Facebook.

On 6 January, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner posted a message on his official Facebook page saying, among other things, that “Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone” and that the city “is consistently ranked by a broad spectrum of groups as being the most tolerant in the nation”.

That is, apparently, unless you criticize him. Pacheco’s response — accusing Meiner of “consistently call[ing] for the death of all Palestinians”, trying “to shut down a theater for showing a movie that hurt his feelings”, and “REFUS[ING] to stand up for the LGBTQ community in any way” — appears to have been too much free speech for the mayor to tolerate.

Six days later, two Miami Police officers knocked on Pacheco’s door, claiming they were there “to have a conversation” and confirm that it was her who made those comments. In a video of the interaction, the officers justify their visit by saying they wanted to prevent “somebody else getting agitated or agreeing with” Pacheco’s post. They added that the line about Meiner’s views on Palestinians “can probably incite somebody to do something radical”, and advised her “to refrain from posting things like that because that could get something incited”.

What occurred at Pacheco’s home raises serious concerns in a free society. Her statements fall well short of the legal threshold for incitement, which applies only to speech which urges unlawful action and is likely to provoke it immediately. A careful reading of her post reveals no call for illegal activity, nor any indication that it would prompt others to act unlawfully.

Residents of the United Kingdom are all too familiar with police interventions over social media content. In September, blogger Pete North was arrested for posting a meme displaying the text “F— Palestine F— Hamas F— Islam… Want to protest? F— off to a Muslim country & protest.” That same month, Deborah Anderson, an American who had been living in England for years, was visited by police for Facebook posts that “upset someone”. And last January, a couple were arrested on suspicion of harassment, evidently for comments as mild as describing an employee at their daughter’s school as a control freak in a parents’ WhatsApp chat. Sadly, such incidents are just a fraction of longstanding limitations on speech in the UK.

These examples demonstrate why the First Amendment sets the bar so high for its few, narrow exceptions. Democracy requires ample breathing room to speak about public issues. If sharp but non-threatening criticism and political commentary can be treated as unlawful incitement, freedom of speech ceases to exist in any meaningful sense.

Such cases highlight the need to safeguard free expression in both the US and the UK. Censorious practices which appear in one place often spread elsewhere. Across the West, law enforcement responses to online criticism are becoming more common. Without vigilance, such interventions will continue. The principle is clear: free expression must be protected.