MLA Dang ordered to pay $7,200 for breaching Alberta vaccine portal

An Independent Alberta MLA has been ordered to pay $1,500 for each day he spent trying to break into the province's vaccine portal to prove the website wasn't perfectly secure, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

An Independent Alberta MLA has been ordered to pay $1,500 for each day he spent trying to break into the province's vaccine portal to prove the website wasn't perfectly secure, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

In total, Thomas Dang – who left the Alberta NDP caucus when RCMP began investigating the incident – has to pay $6,000 in total, as well as a $1,200 victim surcharge fee, by June 30, 2023.

Judge Michelle Doyle called it a fit sentence given the gravity of Dang's actions, which she said had the potential to upend the public's expectation for their private records to be held securely.

However, she noted Dang believed he was acting in service of the public, although Doyle said he "lost sight of the larger context of his conduct" and called his hacking of the website "a backwards effort to protect the privacy of others."

Dang did not speak to media on Tuesday after the sentencing.

He claims he was contacted in September 2021 by a constituent with concerns about Alberta's online vaccine portal, which members of the public used to verify their vaccine status for access to public spaces during the peak of COVID-19 measures.

Dang says he used then-premier Jason Kenney's birth date and his vaccination status, which were already public, to run a computer script for four days that tested the portal's security.