When Canadian intelligence officials speak about today's spying, they can reveal great ambition.

Sometimes they speak of wanting to "master the Internet" or even "target the world" before switching to less evocative terms, such as "computer network operations" or CNO.

When pressed whether this is tantamount to "hacking," they avoid that word.

"We've got some bright young kids," retired spymaster John Adams once told The Globe in an interview. "Virtually everything – 90 per cent of what they do – is CNO now. It opens it up to where they can literally go out and target the world."

These previously unpublished remarks from Mr. Adams, chief of Communications Security Establishment Canada from 2005 to 2011, seemed cryptic at the time they were spoken late last year.

Yet they are a little less so now.

Recently released material suggest just how very good CSEC may be getting at its job –– avoiding the capture of Canadian communications even as it steps up its capacity to spy on countries around the world.

The German computer magazine c't has published what appears to be leaked details about a CSEC endeavour called Landmark. The slides, if genuine, showing how Canadian government "network exploitation analysts" actually do their jobs. The article suggests these details show how the Canadians seek to impose the will of their agency – and allied agencies – on thousands, potentially millions, of computers in "as many non 5-Eyes countries as possible."

The "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance – the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand – is the club of English-speaking nations whose electronic-eavesdropping agencies agree not spy on each other, while working together to keep tabs on the rest of the world.

CSEC does not comment on reports of leaked documents, nor will it indicate whether or not an apparent leak is authentic.

CSEC "only collects foreign intelligence according to the intelligence priorities set regularly by the Government of Canada. This information is critical to protecting Canadians and Canadian interests against serious threats, such as terrorism, foreign espionage, and cyber threats," said spokesman Ryan Foreman in an e-mail.