US whistleblower Edward Snowden says the FBI’s claim to need Apple to break into a terrorist’s iPhone is a sham.

The former contractor with the US National Security Agency was speaking from Moscow to a conference on the threat Big Data and mass surveillance poses to democracy.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation and American tech giant Apple have been engaged in a row over FBI’s claims that it cannot break into an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the terrorists in a deadly attack in San Bernardino, California last year.

“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’ to unlock the phone. Respectfully, that’s horse sh*t,” Snowden said.

The tech giant has argued that the FBI’s demand to roll back data protections to iOS 7 in the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook would give authorities the chance to access other iPhones as well.

Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, raided a Department of Public Health training event and holiday party on December 2, 2015, killing 14 dead and injuring 22.

Snowden also tweeted a link to an article, titled “One of the FBI’s Major Claims in the iPhone Case Is Fraudulent,” later Wednesday, which he called an “example” proving the federal authorities’ allegations false.

Former US intelligence contractor and whistle blower Edward Snowden is pictured during an interview with Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in Moscow on October 21, 2015. (AFP)

The article supports the idea that the FBI is capable of bypassing the “auto-erase” feature on the iPhone.

Apart from that, the US government is infamous for privacy violation, no matter of its citizens or even world leaders.

According to Snowden, the US government surveillance methods far surpass those of an ‘Orwellian’ state, referring to George Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” which describes a society where personal privacy is continuously invaded by spy agencies.