Technology policy didn't get much air time in the 2012 presidential election, but the Obama administration will face serious issues over the next four years.

The country is facing a shortage of qualified technology workers. Potential cybersecurity attacks threaten the nation's power and transportation infrastructures.

Privacy advocates fear the seemingly unchecked digital tracking of consumers by private companies and law enforcement agencies. And the online piracy of music, movies and other content remains a thorny issue.

Here's a look at five of the biggest tech issues facing President Barack Obama, and the country, in his second term:

Piracy

Few topics riled the Internet in 2012 as much as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an anti-piracy bill that raised concerns about free speech and privacy online. The Obama administration opposed that doomed bill but is expected to address the piracy issue again in the next four years.

Hollywood was a major contributor to Obama's re-election campaign, and the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, is optimistic that Obama will support some sort of anti-piracy effort in his second term.

"I look forward to continuing to work closely with the Obama administration to ensure the creative industries have every opportunity to thrive," Dodd said in a statement after Obama's re-election victory. Earlier in the year, Dodd threatened to cut off campaign contributions to politicians who did not support SOPA.

The issue isn't limited to people illegally downloading movies, music and TV shows in the U.S. Hollywood is also battling rampant copyright infringement abroad, and the administration will likely have to address ways to make other countries respect U.S. intellectual property.

But as Washington learned earlier this year, any anti-piracy stance would have to be sensitive to Internet freedom and privacy concerns.

Privacy

There are two main foes in consumers' ongoing struggle to preserve their online privacy: companies that collect data and track people's online behavior to sell them things, and law enforcement agencies that collect data and track people to investigate crimes.

The rules for monitoring modern electronic communications are ill-defined. For the government, a warrant isn't currently required after a certain period of time for older information -- e-mail, social networking profiles or cell-phone location data -- stored "in the cloud" on Web servers.

Congress will likely try to address some of these issues during Obama's second term by updating the antiquated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which dictates what types of personal information the government can access.

"We're concerned that the administration will continue to use national security as a pretext to undermine privacy and other critical rights," said Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, citing the administration's warrantless wiretapping programs, the prosecution of whistle-blowers and what he called an overall lack of transparency.

Civil liberties groups and large technology companies are teaming up to lobby for reform that would dictate what information the government can request and how. Tech companies will also face a separate battle over how they collect data.

The Obama administration has said it wants consumers to have control over whether companies track their online activity. Together with the Federal Trade Commission, the administration pushed Congress for online privacy legislation earlier this year.

The FTC does not currently have the power to pursue companies for privacy violations, but it is tangling with major tech companies on other fronts. Currently it is investigating Google for antitrust violations, claiming the company ranked its own services higher than those of competing companies.

Cybersecurity

Sometimes it takes a crisis to prompt action. Experts are hoping that won't be the case with a crippling cyberattack on the nation's power plants, financial systems or other vital industries.