How does the examination of the internal and external security apparatus in Tunisia provide insight to the recent evaluation of what has happened in Tunis, Cairo, and even Algiers as a result of the Arab Spring? The “security state” built by then President Ben Ali did not survive his ouster, but the security sector—the various police forces, internal security agencies, and customs branches under the control of the ministry of interior—has resisted all subsequent attempts to restructure or reform it. To this day, the ministry of interior still needs to go through its own transition. The previous opportunity was missed, and as a result the security sector has regained its old bad habits: the police and security agencies continue to use excessive force against protestors and enter homes at gunpoint, especially in low-income and peripheral areas of the country; officers periodically besiege courthouses where colleagues are being tried for unlawful use of violence against citizens; various branches are implicated in cross-border smuggling and protection rackets in the informal economy; journalists and activists who are critical of the security sector are subjected to intimidation and arrest on charges of defamation and “indecency;” and the use of torture in police detention has not ended despite the ratification of international protocols prohibiting it after 2011 and a law subjecting police facilities to inspections by human rights monitors in 2013. The organizational segmentation that existed between the internal and external security forces in Tunisia was indicative of how the three different security apparatuses reacted once protests began. One the one end, we have the internal security forces that were closely linked and associated with the Ben Ali regime. On the other hand we have the Tunisian military, which was still closely associated with the regime but was significantly less invested with the regime than the internal security apparatus. Therefore it is easy to predict that when the tides of the protest movements began to overwhelm the regime, that it was easier for the Tunisian military, not the Tunisian internal security forces, to ultimately side with the public protests. This paper posits that the examination of the organizational construction of the security apparatus is vital in understanding the difference between Tunisia, Egypt, and Algeria and can potentially be utilized in arguments that discuss the Arab Spring in general and also the overall relationship that exists between security apparatus and previous regimes during regime change.