It might very well be the truth. Just some Sun Tzu "confuse your enemy" thinking. It would give everybody the idea that they need to increase their defenses. But thinking on the possibility that what they know it is not true and its just a bluff maybe they want to do the opposite, that is discourage everyone from even trying to avoid NSA, and stop being diligent on your own security. Most people don't know too much about computer security and even if they do, the revelations show a huge enemy to beat, so they will just surrender and say, "be it", if you use computers, then there is no privacy why i am going to follow those huge security procedures if they are already in, by hardware, at network level (IP v6), by OS, by force, by keylogger, by the very own software you use. Why lose so much time? Many people will think that and abandon themselves to the "maybe truth" that they have just won.

Also there seems to exist indeed an interest in the USA agencies to reduce the people privacy and that is one of the reasons why CIA investing companies invested in google and in facebooks (the second being a declared paradigm of antiprivacy). What was their reaction to Zimmerman PGP, their export limitations for encryption over 128 bits and many more?. They indeed want to know everything like the "Awareness" agency name suggests.

One thing is true, and this is that the computer and internet industry has received a huge kick in their balls. American companies relying on "the cloud" aswell as those relying on "security" (and probably technology manufacturers whose products won't be seen as innocent as have been seen up to now) are being seen now like pure fraud all over the world and they are loosing billions and billions on contracts. Again, some might say "I alrady knew it". I would say, you "suspected something" in the lines of the thousand of rumours around the world everywhere. But with this revelations (if true) show that they are indeed doing it.

So, did they encourage Snowden to go into the air with those documents, hurting hugely their own computer/internet industry trying to follow the path to get everybody into a higher security? Could be.
Maybe, knowing that they already controlled those companies they could have just issued some laws to encourage much more secure policies in facebook, google, etc and those would have been just followed by the users all over the world (like when lately most companies have started relying in 2-step authentication) without destroying or putting in severe risk their whole own IT industry. I think Google, Apple, Yahoo, etc are indeed not happy. They have moved from the colourful letter kindergarten logo (google) to a Stasi machine. Many have abandoned those companies for good.

I think what German officers are trying to do regarding IT security after snowden revelations, might be a good step to follow. Encourage everyone using policies all over the European Union at least not only to increase their software/internet security but do it from the very scratch, designing everything with the highest privacy levels in mind (e.g client based encryption). India is moving apart from US technology, not only they requested to have their own google servers located in their own soil so US law does not apply. They are also asking people to stop using gmail for state storage (Google Apps won't like that). New Zealand and Germany have stopped following software patents aswell (that will help).

So maybe they have managed to get higher security levels but not only in the western world, but all over the world (even China/Russia etc) and also really hitting hard their own IT industry.