[nickpsecurity]

The forerunners were created in secret for use against enemies during the World War's under Presidents voted in. The people's voted-in Congress representatives that made them official with more authority. Then people kept voting-in even more that kept them over time with no major push to vote out intelligence agencies. Just reform their bad behaviors on occasion.

So, yes, they were voted in and maintained through the elected representatives. That's how a representational democracy works. There was also no pushback strong enough to affect an election and dissolve an intelligence agency. They'd be diminished or gone had that happened.

So, voters wanted the situation and it's here. They can make it go away but it's still here. So much for your hypothesis.

[Nullabillity]

Representative "democracy" means that you can't say that the people wanted a specific policy, only that they considered some person (and their ELECTION platform, which has just about nothing to do with how they'd actually behave in office) the least awful of the given options.

As you said yourself, it was created in secret as a reactionary policy (because those always work out great!), so there was no possible oversight or popular approval.

[nickpsecurity]

People knew about spying. Mostly supported it. Never voted against a politician that did in significant scale. That's direct democracy reinforcing representational democracy. QED.