Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/17/california-dmv-thinks-infos3.html
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WHY do people pay their states to do this sort of thing?
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Maybe not only “in fo sex”, but also “in fo suck”?
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Well it seems like some politicians think our privacy is a kind of depravity.
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Well someone is dyxlexic. 
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Vanity!
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DMV hires morans! Film at eleven.
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If real-world experience is anything to go by, “infosec” is more of a sweet nothing than a term of depravity.
Your vendor will probably whisper it at you; but definitely not mean much by it.
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Taylor Swift would be heartbroken.
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Off-topic, but here’s a different situation where the script was flipped entirely. Guy wanted tags that inadvertently spelled something sexual, but didn’t even realize it. Like, he seriously didn’t get it, and thought maybe they were coming down on him because of some kind of drug reference?
Florida and New York banned a bunch of totally innocuous stuff, and New York banned NUBEETLE, QUEUE, FREMONT, LAPUTA, and even PROUDGAY.
Florida is also the state that issued this plate, which isn’t even a vanity plate BTW:
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I used to work with this guy - who funny enough was in InfoSec - who came into the office one day all proud of himself because he got a vanity plate that when looked at in a mirror spelled oralsex. It was like X35!ARO or something like that.
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It’s probably not the whole word “1NF0S3C”, but rather just “S3C” is on their radar as being too close to “sex”. Mostly, they just wait for someone to complain about a word, then add it to a list. I suppose if you really stretch (which many people with this sort of vanity spelling do), it could be “in fo’ sex”.
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More like S3C got put in the filter since it’s vaguely homo-phonic for sex.
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Bureaucrats can’t think beyond the rules! Film at eleven.
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Sure, but - so what?
Why do they even bother with something as frivolous as taking calls from people who feel personally offended about what somebody’s license plate says? How is “Ok, then don’t read it. Bye!” not an appropriate response? It’s as daft as people who write complaints to a television station rather than simply changing the channel. You get to decide what you are willing to pay attention to, so why dwell upon THIS if you dislike it? It just seems so neurotic, I can’t relate to it!
“Laputa” isn’t as innocuous as you’d think. In Spanish, which Jonathon Swift knew, “la Puta” = “the prostitute”.
Yes, I know that. La Puta is Spanish for “the whore” but Laputa is a Gulliver’s Travels reference. It’s innocuous, but the tag was probably banned for containing the letters PUTA in that order. I noticed that both LAHORE and LAHORE1 were also banned. Lahore is a city in Pakistan, but the tags were probably banned for the same reason as LAPUTA.
It’s both a Gulliver’s Travels reference AND ‘the whore’ in spanish. Swift knew spanish, he knew what that name meant.
infosec? a term of lust or depravity? … ok. I can buy that. it explains a lot. 
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