[arkonaut]

um, this logic is false. you can give money to whoever you want -- this is not the same as hiding a convicted criminal in your basement from the legal authorities.

i can send a $1,000 check to bradley manning (who has actually had charges brought on him, currently in jail), and there would not be a single illegal thing about sending him a check.

[jellicle]

There are plenty of people in jail and dead for the act of sending a check to someone. Giving money to someone is a crime in many circumstances, among them:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A

(Computer crimes are covered there; that is to say, anyone providing money to encourage or support anyone performing any sort of computer crime against U.S. national security is themselves guilty of a crime and liable for up to 15 years in prison.)

[declan]

If you read the title at the top of the page at the link you provides, you'll see it's "Providing material support to terrorists." Manning has not been charged with terrorism.

[jellicle]

The subheadings are not part of the law and are there for general information only. If you read the specifics of the law, as I said in my comment just above, the law covers giving money in support of a wide variety of crimes, not just KABOOM! terrorism, despite the title. The wide variety includes computer crimes.

[rapind]

As long as you aren't pissing off powerful organizations that are watching you... oh wait.

[dnautics]

While I have faith that the US government has a legal system that does a reasonably good job adhering to the principles of logic, precedence, rule of law, reasonableness - and probably a relatively excellent job (comparing to other legal systems), it is neither perfect nor immune from political pressure. Time and time again we see broad classes of situations (drug war, guantanamo) where the US sees fit to throw out what I would consider to be intelligent, rational, reasonable decisions where the matters are not really in shades of grey... It is entirely reasonable to be worried about a very unpleasant reaction by the authorities.

EDIT: I think the likelihood of severe negative consequences is low, but there is a nonzero likelihood of being targeted for a bad experience, for varying values of "bad experiences".

[reeses]

If the US government were to take action on this, the mostly likely consequence is seizure of the funds. They'd target the site itself, which might give them a list of names (which, at the most, they'd lateral to the IRS for fun).

Otherwise, the site would disqualify the campaign and return any funds.

[dnautics]

(edit to above): I think the likelihood of severe negative consequences is low, but there is a nonzero likelihood of being targeted for a bad experience, for varying values of "bad experiences".