Officials have also decided for the first time to use government employees to monitor the voting and counting of ballots, reversing the country's longstanding practice of using workers from nonprofit groups as local election monitors.
But in "a dramatic change in position" in 2006, Justice Stevens said, the agency reversed that longstanding policy not withstanding its "limited resources to monitor the 11,000 drugs on the market".
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, is involved in longstanding class-action lawsuit against AT&T over the company's participation in a plan by the National Security Agency to monitor the private communications of consumers.
The number of homeless children sleeping in New York City shelters rose by 29percentt last year, to a record 13,088 each night, according to city figures released yesterday by the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group that monitors the shelters under a longstanding court decree.
Last week, at the annual meeting of the Financial Control Board, which monitors the city's finances,, Mr. Pataki reiterated his longstanding distaste for stretching out debt at the expense of the besieged state budget.
But who monitors the monitors?
"Swimming in the Hudson is a longstanding activity, but people used to have to clear a path before they could get in the water," said Cara Lee, environmental director for Scenic Hudson, a nonprofit group that monitors the river.
Perhaps just as significantly, it would establish a new inspection and monitoring regime to replace the longstanding program that lapsed last year with the expiration of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, or Start.
Although the technology is relatively new and not without glitches, criminologists say that improved monitoring may help governments address the longstanding problem of how to protect the public without resorting to the further incarceration of criminals.
Satisfying the longstanding questions from the agency, the nuclear monitor of the United Nations, about Iran's possible efforts to weaponize nuclear material would be a crucial element in any agreement between Iran and Western countries.
