Former President Barack Obama has been accused of relaxing rules on the handling of NSA intercepts to allow his aides to review intelligence reports.

Under the old set of guidelines the National Surveillance Agency routinely gathered signal intelligence and censored it before passing it on to other agencies.

But under the new rules, the raw data is passed on to other agencies who are then expected themselves to redact non-pertinent information concerning US citizens.

Because of the wide nature of the trawling involved, US citizens were routinely 'inadvertently' recorded communicating with foreign nationals who were being monitored.

Former US president Barack Obama ordered intelligence gathered from intercepts to be passed around his senior aides before information on American citizen has been redacted

The data was gathered by the National Surveillance Agency, pictured, and passed around

According to Circa.com, under the previous administration figures such as Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice, CIA director John Brennan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch were all permitted to view the raw intelligence files.

According to the report, some of the intercepted reports gathered between November and January concerned figures in Donald Trump's transition team who were communicating with foreign nationals.

It is claimed the NSA will hand over details of the Americans affected to a congressional committee.

One source said: 'Wholesale access to unmasked incidental NSA intercepts essentially created the potential for spying on Americans overseas after the fact, which is exactly what our foreign intelligence arms are not supposed to be doing.'

Last week FBI director James Comey acknowledged they were investigating possible connections between members of Donald Trump's team and Russian nationals.

Following this revelation, Democratic senator Ron Wyden has written to the US Senate Intelligence Committee calling for a full investigation of Trump's Russian connections.

He said: 'Efforts to understand these relationships and to separate fact from speculation have been hampered by the opacity of the finances of President Trump and his associates.'

On Monday, Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank admitted its executives met with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, left, who is now a senior White House figure

On Monday, the state development bank Vnesheconombank disclosed that its executives had met Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, in December. And last week Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, admitted he had done business work for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Trump has repeatedly insisted allegations that he or members of his administration have an untoward relationship with Russia as 'fake news'. He has also said that he has no business deals in Russia.

A Reuters investigation published earlier this month found that dozens of members of the Russian elite have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records.

Wyden has repeatedly tried to push into public light more information about U.S. investigations into Russia's role in the 2016 election.

He organized a two-sentence letter from seven senators to the White House last November asking the outgoing Obama administration to declassify additional information about Russia's interference in the election. Then-president Barack Obama announced a review of Russia's activities soon after.

U.S. intelligence agencies later released a review of its assessment of Russia's multi-pronged influence campaign, concluding Moscow's actions were intended to help Trump win and discredit his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Russia has denied the allegations.