Has the statute of limitatiions run out for us suing Clinton over Echelon and Carnivore?
Statute of limitations is a notion that describes the interval betwen injury (in some jurisdictions, this is the time the injury was incurred, in others it is when the injured party became aware of the injury), and bringing of the lawsuit. A statute of limitations runs on a case-by-case basis - party by party.
Echelon and Carnivore are described in mire general terms as "NSA monitoring" in a few court cases that I've read, and no court has found the un-targeted gathering of signal to violate the 4th amendment.
See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1550960/posts?page=26#26 and later posts (especially 35), as well as links back from there for one example.
The NSA intelligence gathering operation is described sufficiently for present purposes in Halkin, 598 F.2d at 4, as follows (footnote omitted):
A brief description of NSA and its functions is appropriate. NSA itself has no need for intelligence information; rather, it is a service organization which produces intelligence in response to the requirements of the Director of Central Intelligence. Intelligence Activities: Hearings Before the Select Comm. to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the U. S. Senate, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. Vol. V at 9 (1975) (Hearings). The mission of the NSA is to obtain intelligence from foreign electrical communications. Signals are acquired by many techniques. The process sweeps up enormous numbers of communications, not all of which can be reviewed by intelligence analysts. Using "watch-lists"-lists of words and phrases designed to identify communications of intelligence interest-NSA computers scan the mass of acquired communications to select those which may be of specific foreign intelligence interest. Only those likely to be of interest are printed out for further analysis, the remainder being discarded without reading or review. Intelligence analysts review each of the communications selected. The foreign intelligence derived from these signals is reported to the various agencies that have requested it (Hearings at 6). Only foreign communications are acquired, that is, communications having at least one foreign terminal (Hearings at 9).
I think there are links back to the Senate hearings from there, as well -- ahh, found it, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1550146/posts.
Kind of wondered that my self. Had an interesting discussion about that with my brother in law.