Last week, the British government launched an online crime map that offered street-level crime statistics. The website promptly crashed from the onslaught of visitors, which hit 18 million per hour at one point. News coverage: BBC News, The Guardian; The Independent.

Critiques of the map from Kenneth Field and Alex Singleton: privacy laws don’t allow the map to provide precise locations, but the map provides the data at pinpoints, which is misleading in that instead of being approximate, it implies that the crime from one location is actually taking place at another.

Via @geoplace, @spatialanalysis (1, 2) and Google Maps Mania.

Previously: Concerns About Planned British Crime Maps.