It would be interesting to see what regulations and ethics rules this comes under. Frequently these sorts of rights can be signed away in the US, but there are also academic bodies with their own rules that might have a say.
In our system, the Makefile or Project file that compiles the project contains Git commit and push commands to automatically commit changes into the student repository. Using this system, changes are tracked every time the project is compiled. When a student modifies a source file as a part of the program-build-test- debug cycle, the Makefile commits and pushes the recent changes into source control. This creates a fine-grained sequence of commits that tell the story of how the program was developed.
They basically force-commit to your repo whenever you build your code, so they are able to 'track' your development?
I think there is a difference between accessing a record that someone has chosen to make, and causing a record to be made.
I think that should be the distinction between search and surveillance. I think both need regulation but surveillance should require a higher standard of of regulation