Brazil has no official interest in granting Edward Snowden permanent asylum, despite the NSA whistleblower's open letter to the country offering to help investigate the United States' massive data-mining program.

The official reason given is that Brazil has not yet received Snowden's formal application for asylum, which is required before the country could consider honoring his request. But according to Brazilian paper Folha de. S.Paulo, Brazil's government doesn't want to pursue an investigation into the NSA's spy programs and therefore has little incentive to grant Snowden amnesty.

The issue, though, has divided Brazil's Congress. "Brazil should not miss the opportunity to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, who was key to unraveling the U.S. espionage system," Senatore Ricardo Ferraso wrote on Twitter yesterday. And some congressmen have asked Russia for permission to interview Snowden.

But other members of Brazilian congress oppose granting Snowden asylum, saying such a move would cause more harm than good, especially with the U.S., one of the country's largest trading partners.

There's still, technically, a chance Brazil would accept Snowden, which is more than he has in his home country: On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney shot down suggestions that the U.S. could grant Snowden amnesty if he returned the classified documents he took last spring.