Mitt Romney has announced a new energy plan he says will lead to greater energy independence if he’s elected. The plan calls for states to have greater authority to allow drilling on federal lands within their borders. What would that drilling mean for those lands? Drilling technology has made huge leaps forward, but it’s still drilling and still has impact.

A group of consumer advocate organizations has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that several companies, including McDonald’s and General Mills, are violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. There are concerns about email swapping among children, and what happens to the children’s email addresses that are collected by companies. And for the most part, children aren’t aware of the security issues that come with browsing the Internet.

Any computer hooked up to the Internet is a potential victim of malicious hackers. Of course, it’s one thing to be hacked on a desktop PC, it’s quite another to be hacked in your car, traveling at 70 miles an hour, with a computer that controls your brakes and steering. It’s not time to freak out — yet. But automakers and security experts will have to learn to evolve faster than the bad guys.

At some point, you’re going to buy a new phone. Events today in a San Jose courtroom are going to have a big effect on how that goes as lawyers for Apple and Samsung make closing arguments in the patent lawsuit between the companies. If Apple wins, the adjustments to the smartphone market might not be that huge. If Samsung wins, any company making Android gadgets can keep making them look like Apple gadgets.

The research company Gartner has issued its annual Hype Cycle Report, detailing when different technologies will become part of daily life. Expect paying for stuff with your smartphone to become an everyday thing, and 3D printing too. Jetpacks, though? Don’t ask. Plus, a tech reporter who’s taking a year off the Internet — no web, no email, no texting — and is happier because of it.

The American Civil Liberties Union is filing information requests with nearly 500 police departments in 38 states having to do with License Plate Reader cameras, or LPRs. Apparently, tens of thousands of them are being used around the country. The cameras help police spot cars that may be wanted, but according to the ACLU, the problem lies in the fact that the cameras store people’s license plate numbers for a long time, and there’s not that much known about how the technology is actually being deployed.

Target, Walmart, Lowe’s, 7-11, Best Buy, a whole bunch of big retailers are teaming up on a new mobile payment system. It’s called Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX and it will let you pay for things using your smartphone. They’re not the only ones trying this. Google has the Google Wallet system. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are planning to launch one soon as well. So why is everyone racing to join in? It’s all about being most popular, and eventually getting the most data from you.

On social media platforms, the candidates can’t say enough about the economy. But what citizens are retweeting and sharing and liking isn’t mostly the economy, but other issues which tend to be ones that people feel passionately about like immigration, women’s rights — issues where people feel a personal connection to them. The research indicates that voters might be in the mood for a broader discussion.

Google says if it gets enough complaints about something, it will slide those sites lower in search results, make them harder to discover. That something this time is websites that transmit non-copyrighted material — bootleg music and movies on file-sharing sites. That’s because Google needs to score points with the entertainment industry. It wants to sell more music and movies through its Google Play store. It wants cable channels to play along with Google TV and with Google Fiber. And it could all affect your Google searches.