After a couple of installs, and uninstalls, of the Miktex (version 2.9.6643-x64) on Windows 7, and following
(1) some recommended changes of environment variables (in another question) and
(2) tried the installation and update with and without a proxy, it appears that the "SSL connect error" remains consistent.
This appears to be a bug with the latest Miktex release, since I have not had any problems with the previous vintage.