MiniDV still alive for some reason

I looked at some digicamcorders recently, and found a lot of them still on the miniDV standard that was popular when I first looked into these cams in 1999.

I don't get it. Magnetic disk drives have reached impressive capacities in tiny footprints, flash memory costs nothing and is fast, even smaller, and very high capacity. Why bother putting a tape in the camcorder anymore ?

I'm still using this old Sony MiniDV DCR-PC101 cam, and my number 1 problem is that it won't record because of some issue with all the moving parts on the tape writing mechanism. I fix it by literally banging it on hard surfaces until it works again, (which is the most accepted method of repair on the internet). I can't imagine buying another video camera that relies on tape at this point.

Terrorists don't take pictures as much as photographers

You may have been following news stories that show security guards harassing citizens in malls, libraries, and train stations across the country. Here's a good one where, while the railway authority insists on-camera that they don't ban photography, they are interrupted by a security guard demanding that the camera be turned off.

Bruce Schneier is brilliant (as always) in his discussion of the ban on photography in the effort to stop terrorists:

Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.

Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don't seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?