Cryptography is a means to an end. You can achieve both better privacy (e.g. by not revealing the UID to unauthenticated readers, and never in plaintext) and b

Cryptography is a means to an end. You can achieve both better privacy (e.g. by not revealing the UID to unauthenticated readers, and never in plaintext) and better tracking (by cryptographically authenticating cards to unauthenticated readers), depending on how you structure the system, so I don't think it's possible to intrinsically say one is more private than the other.