I've been surprised recently how many worldly people have been cheering Wikileaks and think what they're doing is OK. This isn't a judgment on anyone - just surprise. I'm as big an infojunkie as anyone ;-)
Is there significant support amongst the intelligentsia for nixing laws like the Espionage Act and Official Secrets Act that the government and military rely on?
"Is there significant support amongst the intelligentsia for nixing laws like the Espionage Act and Official Secrets Act that the government and military rely on?"
It's not that there is widespread support for nixing those laws, but since the US government has been using those laws rather broadly (most notably during the invasion of Iraq), I'd say there is support for revising those laws.
Laws that protect secrets are a sort of Schrödinger's cat, though, in that in order to decide if they are a secret, you have to know the secret. So all government declared secrets are both secrets and non-secrets at the same time.
It will be a long time before the Iraq invasion documents are declassified, far too long from now to consider it ammo for those that want a more transparent government.
I'm not defending Wikileaks nor their supporters necessarily, but I would guess that this is the link of thinking with exposing (some of) these documents. For some documents, clearly they are exposing things just to provoke people and draw media attention, for which they have been insanely successful.
Naming it "Wikileaks" was excellent for PR. People's first associations will be with efforts like Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, which have a significant amount of goodwill.
Is there significant support amongst the intelligentsia for nixing laws like the Espionage Act and Official Secrets Act that the government and military rely on?