It appears the fishermen are lifting their nets — dragnets, that is. Like any good angler, they’ll mark down the hot spot for next season. But was their catch worth it?

For the NSA, heading back to shore might be the last thing on its to-do list. But after 14 years of stashing bulk metadata of Americans’ communications, the agency has reeled in its dragnet. The NSA declared it ended the controversial program at midnight Nov. 29, following a recent modification to the USA Freedom Act set into place by Congress in June.

The most important provision is that this only pertains to phone calls, in which the NSA has relinquished the ability to impel major telecom firms to turn over metadata. Metadata refers to the volume of calls and their duration, not the content in them. All records of such now remains in the hands of service providers, and NSA will have to apply to take control of such information through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a U.S. court established by Congress in 1978 that operates largely behind a veil.

Initially, the NSA’s bulk collection after the tragedies of 9/11 was geared more specifically toward tracking known and suspected members of Al Qaeda. However, the beginning of the secret searchlight, which operated as a tracking method without court-ordered warrants, ushered 14 years of surveillance muck.

Thanks to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who graced this community via video at the Englert in September, the controversial practices from the Patriot, Freedom Act, and FISA Amendment Acts as well as the PRISM program were thrust into the limelight. In 2013, the whistleblower disclosed records in which FISC mandated that Verizon hand over all metadata on its clientele, ultimately leading to Congress’ decision in June.

Though the Daily Iowan Editorial Board believes this is a small victory for the people of America, the program shutting down only affects a rather negligible portion of surveillance as well as further obfuscates government transparency. Though 93 percent of smart-phone users ages 18-29 use their devices for phone calls, according the Pew Research Center, text messaging and Internet use outpace calling with 100 and 97 percent, respectively. Furthermore, telephonic metadata collection takes one step further into the shadows by bringing in the FISC to handle calling records.

If the telephone-surveillance program were still in effect, the NSA would have accumulated metadata for 3 billion phone calls, according to former NSA employee William Binney. And it is still free to roam the cyberspace, hoarding exponentially more metadata from the Internet. PRISM, established in 2007, still holds agreements with at least nine major U.S. Internet service companies, including Google and Microsoft. PRISM accesses search history, email, file transfers, and live chats. Additionally, Google keeps tabs on student data through its education services, which the company claimed Wednesday isn’t for dubious causes and still upholds privacy protection.

Post-9/11 surveillance is a response to terrorism and the result of fearmongering from public officials. Surveying metadata isn’t any better or worse than tradition Big Brother-esque methods. One side effect: The people under watch become dehumanized by their metadata, morphing simply into numbers stored away in a 1-million-square-foot database in Utah. Slight variances in zeroes and ones then can cause dramatic effects on the people, particularly with such incendiary topside rhetoric.