The claim that "the US people didn't directly agree to [broad NSA traffic/metadata analysis]" is a mere cavil at best; "the US people" need not "agree", nor particularly need our representatives, who debate and pass laws, but who do not interpret them -- such questions are considered and ruled upon by judges, and ultimately by the Supreme Court. (Or by the FISC, whose members' appointment by the Chief Justice I'd argue gives them roughly equivalent standing.) The final root of the current question being whether NSA acted in accord with applicable law, and whether said law is itself in accord with the Constitution, the Supreme Court or its FISC delegate is the proper venue in which to settle it -- and the sort of pointless, ugly public furball we see before us gains no one anything who has the slightest interest in the rule of law.

Does this seem perhaps unsavory to you? A hair totalitarian, perhaps? Should the will of the people not be the ultimate sovereign? I bid you welcome to the Republic! -- the Republic built upon the rubble of the popular-sovereignty concept as codified in the failed Articles of Confederation, the Republic which for at least the last century or so has actually done a pretty solid job of living up to its primary design goal, which put simply is to keep the levers of power safe from the mob, and vice versa. Of course, the Republic has lately grown a thick, sclerotic crust of permanent civil service at the boundary between the two, and that's hardly ideal, but given that the only plausible alternative at this point is the catastrophe of mob rule, I'm perfectly happy to take what I can get. So should you be; especially in the modern era, genuine democracy has some really nasty failure modes, not least of which was das tausendjährige Reich.