Page 438 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Bishop Peregrino's expression of detached amusement vanished from his face. "I don't know what this meeting is about."
Bosquinha turned around on her stool to face him. "I was very young when I was appointed to be Governor of the new Lusitania Colony. It was a great honor to be chosen, a great trust. I had studied government of communities and social systems since my childhood, and I had done well in my short career in Oporto. What the committee apparently overlooked was the fact that I was already suspicious, deceptive, and chauvinistic."
"These are virtues of yours that we have all come to admire," said Bishop Peregrino.
Bosquinha smiled. "My chauvinism meant that as soon as Lusitania Colony was mine, I became more loyal to the interests of Lusitania than to the interests of the Hundred Worlds or Starways Congress. My deceptiveness led me to pretend to the committee that on the contrary, I had the best interests of Congress at heart at all times. And my suspicion led me to believe that Congress was not likely to give Lusitania anything remotely like independent and equal status among the Hundred Worlds."
"Of course not," said Bishop Peregrino. "We are a colony."
"We are not a colony," said Bosquinha. "We are an experiment. I examined our charter and license and all the Congressional Orders pertaining to us, and I discovered that the normal privacy laws did not apply to us. I discovered that the committee had the power of unlimited access to all the memory files of every person and institution on Lusitania."
The Bishop began to look angry. "Do you mean that the committee has the right to look at the confidential files of the Church?"
"Ah," said Bosquinha. "A fellow chauvinist."
"The Church has some rights under the Starways Code."
"Don't be angry with me."
"You never told me."
"If I had told you, you would have protested, and they would have pretended to back down, and then I couldn't have done what I did."
"Which is?"
"This program. It monitors all ansible-initiated accesses to any files in Lusitania Colony." Dom Cristao chuckled. "You're not supposed to do that."