Re How the West could do it:
You need trust that the exit nodes are fast, well funded and NGO like. You need national level mastery of all packet traffic in and out of every tame provider.
Think of the cost of setting and funding per month a really good set of TOR servers/nodes.
You would really want the commanding height of the fastest say top 5 exit relays, then a larger pool of a good few 10's of other relays.
This would herd and make clear most traffic in a larger nation.
To cover this project set up as many NGO, friendly "person" like fronts as you can to do the heavy lifting. You have to win the packet race with all other server products in the domestic and international interconnect locations every hour. No hard, just ensure your nations telco network has a lot of end points that peers all telco plans to say an east and west coast or big main city. Get the young intelligence community staff to hold "crypto parties" where other real NGO's can put a friendly face to the new big servers. This builds confidence that its a nice real person working with some of more big tor exits. Add in some work colleges of the young intelligence community staff to set up Tor nodes and a country will soon have real faces to a lot of the back end hardware.
As for price? Think back to the GCHQ's 2006 programmes around the SIGMod (sigint modernisation) initiative and a nation can get Tempora http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar... (24 June 2013)
Once you have every packet moving in and out of a nation, just sort deep over time.
After that you have the telco net down the the users and can get unique hardware/software layer information per user, no matter the ip or provider like with p2p and classic MAC addresses.
The honeypot aspect was talked about in 1997.

I am sure some pro nuclear AC will put it in terms of fruit, nuts, flights or average medical exposure as the classic talking point. What this will do to your lungs or after ingestion is the risk never mentioned.

Yes get the OS to create its own files to move up everyday. All the good aspects of the cloud, nothing to see but encrypted files your OS understands and can recreate, search. Storage space is all you need.

Re 'Wouldn't it be much more efficient to just eliminate the polygraph altogether?"
Not if your selling and using the kit at a state and federal level.
The UK and other nations know you have to look at a persons life story, interview parents face to face, extended family, friends. School, local courts, chased down old paper records and build up a real generational life story of reading material, internet use, political ideas, faith, links to other nations, links to other nations faith, cash flow.
The US finds this to be hard work that is stuck with cleared gov staff - no private sector profits. So they have passed testing onto a person doing a test in a chair.
At best they watch your reading habit on the internet, do some digital database searches and very carefully note what your reading before the test. A rapid spike in internet searches for "polygraph" or an order for print books on 'polygraph" before the test is noted.
The rest is just time saving questions about your life, reading lists, political connections, family with the cheap digital review/state federal database search as a guide.
The average person sees a complex medical device and the charm of an interviewer hinting they know the person is feeling a certain way and want to "help".
That the job is great for them, but they have to help with a second or third test and really open up, the 'feelings' aspect.
A real spy knows that they are loyal to, faith is and what the truth is - they have no issues or feelings to mess them up on the day.
An average skilled worker with a lot to offer will over think the questions and might fail. A huge loss for the nation over decades.
The UK thought hard about this in the 1980's and seemed to understand what a real look into a persons life was about vs a digital search and perfect interview skills on one day.
The calm spies stay in, the good useful people mess up and are not considered.

The use of slang, street smarts, been part of a hidden culture, keeping that side of you hidden and having traveled the world might be seen as useful.
Or to pick out a person who is not part of that culture very quickly.
The other aspects is cash flow, law enforcement files and blackmail over things you might have done to enjoy that expensive activity.
It really depends on what part of the gov found you or who you face in the interviews.
Some are deeply devout teetotaler other staff might be more world wise and want people who can fit in around the world.
Signals intelligence at home facing blackmail vs an understanding of human intelligence in the field globally.

Re "Point is, if they want you on 'a list', they'll put you on the list, no matter what you do or don't do."
Reworking the old Soviet "owning a western watch" joke:
Three frequent flyers in a military prison get to talking about why they are there.
"I am here because I always got to airport five minutes late, and they charged me with sneaking in", says the first.
"I am here because I kept getting to airport 2 hours early, and they charged me with spying" says the second.
"I am here because I got to airport on time," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a watch."

Thats interesting AC but recall the FBI infiltration program called Patcon (Patriot Conspiracy) around 1991?
The laws, funding, interest was always ready. This new more simple legal listing is just a new next step to gather more people onto new and existing databases.
Patriot Games
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a...
If you want to go back further you had Project MINARET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
i.e. "watch lists" of American citizens around 1967 and 1973.
No judicial oversight, no warrants for interception and even got some UK help too :)

Re:"Face it, this site and it's users aren't even on their radar."
Yes we are AC
Recall Quantum insert? "GCHQ Created Spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot Sites To Serve Malware"
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... (Nov 11 2013)
We are of interest to some part of the intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. What one nation finds is shared with the other 5 :) (and a few other nations too)

Re Since when is Tor popular?
Think back to the mid/late 1990's as the start point for some onion routing topics.
Naval Research Labs Review had the 1997 paper "Private Web Browsing".
Would early/mid 2000 be another interesting time? The funding, grants, press where in place by 2005. More grants over 2007-2010+

Follow the funding back in the day (Office of Naval Research and DARPA), understand the funding for the huge costly, fast exit nodes in the US early on.
The origins where for open source intelligence gathering by the US mil and the US gov support of "freedom fighters" spreading democracy.
The main issue early on was any user of the tech would be seen as a tool of the US gov. Not good if emerging human intelligence stands out on any telco system.
How was this set back to be fixed? By flooding the network with diverse users globally and offering free bandwidth, better speed and pushing the an open source grassroots technology front.
The press, dissidents and whistleblowers, all kinds of sites started to spread news about wanting to help people the in repressive countries.
ie a large group of users had to be created allow gov users to hide and help with the node/relay.
Carefully crafted news dropped the military and intelligence origins and pushed the press, First Amendment, dissidents, protected speech side.
Follow the early grants back ie "Pass-Through" funding.
Terms like '“Basic and Applied Research and Development in Areas Relating to the Navy Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.”" seems to be floating around.
Finally we got to Snowden and the Stinks page. "Critical mass" - the users are all on the same network, and we are back to the fast exit relays question.
Follow the few law enforcement stories, if you have all data moving out of a network, around the world a few times and then back into the same network?
Its simple to find the in ip, back from the message sent. We also now know that the "internet" in some countries is a known network Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and XKeyscore http://daserste.ndr.de/panoram...