Do We Need a New Pottery Barn Rule for Cyberwarfare?

1. I thought I read that Flame was well targeted and had command and control systems to make sure it hadn't "violated the computers and networks of <i>countless</i> numbers of people and companies". I could be wrong but Flame isn't the latest botnet zombie creator spitting out $largeNumber of infections a second, it's more subtle than that.

2. The Pottery Barn Rule may be A Good Thing(tm), maybe not. But it's pretty clear that (for better or worse, I don't want to debate the politics) the US government has no intention of following The Pottery Barn Rule when it comes to foreign policy decisions regarding the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. It's a rather weak premise to base your argument for a new rule on a past rule that's ineffective because the power in question ignores it.

This wouldn't work though. The government is immune(or at least heavily protected) against things like class action lawsuits for this very reason. Unless we can get past this giant political and bureaucratic hurdle we won't be able to do much except throw money into our own security. Even then, how is the best persona/corporate security schemes and policies going to withstand something developed by the brightest mathematicians and security experts money can buy?

...if Flame contaminates my computer, the US government "owns" it? Rather poor choice of words.