I strongly suspect that the main reason for trying to blame Mr. Snowden is to distract from the complete and utter failure of intelligence agencies to prevent the attack (and other attacks before, of course).<p>The one remotely plausible reason given for the monstrous surveillance apparatus is prevention of terrorist attacks, and once the public starts noticing how that does not really work, we might start having a debate on what we can <i>really</i> do to prevent such attacks, like, oh, maybe trying to understand the root causes that drive people to blow themselves up.