Not by default, no.
It will always provide some form of protection against simple eavesdropping attacks, because the data will always be encrypted (as long as the SSL server you are connecting to allows you to use at least one encrypted cipher - yes, null encryption ciphers are allowed in HTTPS: roll-eyes connections: ) However, by default it will not protect against human-in-the-middle, because it does not check server certificates, so you cannot be sure that you are connected to the intended server.
. fopen, . . .
$context = stream_context_create( array(
'ssl' => array(
'cafile' => 'ca_bundle.crt',
'verify_peer' => true
)
));
$file = fopen( $url, 'r', false, $context );