Mike Isaac, writing at All Things D:

In the end, the New York DA and the judge used a legal maneuver to put pressure on Twitter, threatening to hold the company in contempt of court and levy steep fines if it didn’t hand over the data.

You can’t say they didn’t try.

They have even appealed the judge’s threat to hold them in contempt. The envelope—yes, a physical envelope—containing the tweets at issue will remain sealed until that appeal is complete.

I’ve said it before: it may not be a good time to be a third-party Twitter developer, but the company truly goes to bat for its users when it’s appropriate.